Will 2025 Outperform 2020 In El Paso Layoffs?

Two recent layoffs of hundreds of El Paso employees during the first quarter of El Paso signals a likely economic downturn for the city. Federal contractors Luke Staffing and MVM began laying off hundreds of El Paso employees this week.

MVM, Inc., a private contractor for the federal government, laid off 247 of its workers last Tuesday, according to its letter to the Workforce Commission. In the letter, MVM officials blamed the job losses on the termination of its Office of Refugee Resettlement Unaccompanied Children and Logistics federal contract. The contract tasked MVM with transporting unaccompanied migrant children. MVM, a Virginia based company, also laid off 132 employees in McAllen.

In addition to the MVM layoffs, Luke Staffing laid off an additional 227 employees according to its WARN Act notices. In total, Luke Staffing is laying off 676 employees across the state of Texas. Luke Staffing, like MVM, blamed the layoffs on the non-renewal of their federal contracts for transporting unaccompanied migrant children.

In our report last month discussing the threat to El Paso’s economy we discussed how dependent El Paso’s economy is on direct federal jobs.

The Trump Administration’s immigration enforcement and reduction in government expenses was expected to affect El Paso’s job market. Non-profits providing support for migrants have lost federal funding for their operations. Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) ostensibly looks to “maximize governmental efficiency and productivity” by “modernizing Federal technology and software.”

DOGE has been making news headlines for eliminating federal jobs, most recently with the closing of several Social Security offices across the country.

In addition to the federal workforce reduction that DOGE is implementing, it is cancelling rental contracts for federal buildings. In El Paso, two buildings are scheduled to be closed, likely resulting in additional job losses. According to DOGE’s annual savings dashboard, El Paso will be losing the Geological Survey annual rental contract for $75,290 and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission contract for $154,936. It is not known if the employees working at those locations will be terminated or transferred to other locations. Nonetheless, the loss of the federal rental contracts will affect ancillary workers connected to the two facilities.

The DOGE savings dashboard argues that the “most savings” from its work comes from targeting federal departments such as the Department of Homeland Security, at number ten on the list, the Department of Defense at number 17 and Department of Justice at number 18 on the list. These federal departments work on immigration-related issues, which is one of Trump’s primary priorities raising the question of whether the DOGE expense reductions will affect immigration enforcement that the Trump Administration prioritizes.

The recent El Paso layoffs of contractors working for Luke Staffing and MVM suggests that although immigration is a priority for the administration, its work on reducing government expenses may not be protecting the federal workers tasked with immigration enforcement.

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One workaround the Trump Administration may be using to both reduce government expenses and prioritize immigration may be to use the military for immigration enforcement. Trump is seeking to use the military to detain undocumented immigrants in military facilities. By using the military, the Trump Administration can both keep immigration as a top priority while also reducing costs, mainly paychecks for federal work.

Fort Bliss has been identified as one of the military bases for immigration enforcement.

The issue for El Paso’s work force remains that the use of active-duty military personnel and facilities for immigration enforcement does not allow El Paso’s economy to benefit from one of Trump’s priorities. Instead, Luke Staffing and MVM layoffs suggest that the work of DOGE is detrimental to El Paso’s job market this year. Already, during the first quarter, the job losses in 2025 represents about 30% of the total job losses that occurred in 2020 due to the pandemic.

The Warn Act Notices For 2020-2025

The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act generally requires businesses to provide 60 days in advance notice for planned mass layoffs. According to the US Department of Labor, companies with 100 or more fulltime employees must provide notification of mass layoff or plant closings involving more than 50 employees.

The Texas Workforce Commission website posts the required notices as they become available. El Paso News reviewed the notices from 2020 through 2025.

According to our review, the 474 job losses reported this week account for around 30% of the total job losses reported in 2020 due to the pandemic. This week’s job losses are larger than in 2021, 2022 and 2023.

What is important to note is that the WARN Act notices only involve companies with 100 or more employees with layoffs of more than 50 employees at a time. Not included in the WARN notices are the smaller companies, especially those providing services to the larger companies, like accounting, IT or other business-related services like janitorial.

According to the latest figures available from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate in December 2024 for El Paso was around 4%. Because of the lag time between the job losses and the reporting, it will not be known for a few months how the job losses will affect the unemployment rate and whether other El Paso employees lost their jobs.

According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, although the labor market in El Paso experienced some growth in December, the government sector, which accounts for almost 20% of the job market experienced a decline of just under 3%. This decline is before the DOGE work in reducing government expenses and this week’s layoffs.

Moreover, the data from the Federal Reserve shows additional job losses in transportation (-2.6%) and manufacturing (-2.3%) which are related to foreign trade. The Trump Administration paused the threatened tariffs against México until April 2. México exports over 80% of its products to the US, some of which transit through El Paso.

Should the Trump Administration allow the tariffs to come into effect on April 2, it would add a third plank of job losses to El Paso’s economy.

WARN Layoff Notice 2020-2025