How is the shift in federal policy that began in January 2025 reaching New York? Partners across the state kept asking us that question, so in October 2025, with support from New York State and the Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo, we launched the NYS Federal Impacts Dashboard to help answer it. The first version tracked ten years of county jobs and federal grants and contracts.
Today we’re releasing a rebuilt dashboard. It treats the shift as a statewide shock and follows it as closely as public data allow, with new views on the federal workforce, the people most exposed to cuts, nonprofits and early warning signs.
What’s in it
The dashboard draws on a dozen public sources: payroll job counts from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Office of Personnel Management’s monthly records of federal employees, the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, federal awards and payments for work in New York from USAspending.gov, the IRS’s records of charities’ finances, and weekly unemployment claims and layoff notices from the U.S. and New York State Departments of Labor. The About the data view lists each one.
Results are available for the state, its ten economic development regions and all 62 counties, and federal spending also for New York’s 26 congressional districts. Jobs and federal spending go back to 2016, so the changes since January 2025 can be read against nearly a decade of ordinary years.
The dashboard is built in Python from public data, with every step from download to chart in code, so it rebuilds itself each week as new data come out. It shares its look with the rebuilt Wage Atlas, and the rest of our data tools will follow.
How to use it
The views are listed across the top of the page.
- Overview gives the headline figure from every view and a county exposure score, which ranks the 62 counties on how much they depend on federal jobs and money.
- Jobs shows payroll jobs by county since 2016, for federal, state and local government and private employers, with the monthly statewide count and unemployment.
- Federal workforce follows federal employees by agency and county each month, with every hire and separation and the reason for leaving.
- Who is exposed shows who federal workers are and where they live, with an estimate of who has left federal service by race, ethnicity and sex.
- Grants and assistance and Contracts show federal money for work in New York since fiscal year 2016, by county, congressional district, agency and type of recipient, with programs for grants and industries for contracts. Grants and assistance also shows what agencies actually paid out.
- Nonprofit exposure shows how much New York’s charities rely on government grants, by county and kind of organization.
- Early warning follows weekly unemployment claims by federal workers, which move before the other data do.
- Explainers puts the numbers in context, with plain-language pieces on the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and the timing of federal cuts, on how federal money reaches New York and where cuts show up, and on why two counts of federal workers differ, plus a glossary.
- About the data lists every source, when it updates and how the dashboard uses it.
A few tips. Select a county or region on any map to focus the view on it, and select it again to clear it. On every map, a darker shade means more, and each map can be switched to a table. Each panel says what it counts and offers its data for download. Changes are measured from fiscal year 2024, the last full year before the shift, or from the same months of it, and dollar figures can be shown adjusted for inflation or as reported.
What it shows
New York’s federal workforce is shrinking. Agencies that report where their staff work had 35,744 employees in New York in August 2026, 15.8% fewer than in January 2025. Since January 2025, 10,348 of their New York employees have left federal service: 3,150 resigned, 3,081 took the deferred resignation offer, 2,278 retired, 1,105 were terminated and 194 lost their jobs in reductions in force. Counting every agency and the Postal Service, New York had 107,200 federal jobs in August 2026, 7.3% fewer than in December 2024. One of the new explainers sets out why the two counts differ.
Federal workers are filing for unemployment at more than twice the 2024 rate. Since January 2025, federal workers in New York have filed an average of 38 new claims a week, 2.4 times the 2024 average of 16.
Federal assistance has grown overall, while competitive grants have fallen. Federal assistance for work in New York came to $250.1 billion in fiscal year 2025, 2.3% more than in fiscal 2024 after inflation, carried by Social Security, Medicaid and the other large programs that grow with enrollment and prices. The competitive grants that nonprofits, universities and local governments apply for fell by about a sixth, from $18.2 billion to $15.1 billion as reported, and from February to July 2025 agencies awarded about half as much in them as in the same months a year earlier.
Federal contracts have fallen sharply. Contracts performed in New York fell 22.0% after inflation from fiscal 2024 to fiscal 2025, to $12.1 billion, and the year under way is running 16.5% below the same months of fiscal 2024.
What agencies paid out shows the same pattern. New to the dashboard are the payments agencies make on their awards, not just the amounts they commit. After inflation, payments on assistance for New York rose 5.9% from fiscal 2024 to 2025 and are running 5.3% ahead of fiscal 2024 so far this year, led by the Essential Plan, Social Security and Medicare. But several programs that schools, housing authorities and transit systems rely on are paying out less than in the same months of fiscal 2024, after rising in fiscal 2025: Title I school funding by about a quarter after inflation, public housing operating funds by nearly a fifth and transit formula grants by nearly a third. And pandemic relief has run out: the Education Stabilization Fund paid out $6.2 billion in New York in the first eleven months of fiscal 2024 and $0.1 billion in the same months of fiscal 2026.
Nonprofits lean on government grants. Government grants make up an estimated 9.4% of New York charities’ revenue, about $29 billion a year, and about a quarter of the revenue of human services organizations.
Exposure is highest in Albany, Cayuga and Tioga counties, which top the dashboard’s exposure score: Albany for its federal workers and federal money, Cayuga for its charities’ reliance on government grants, and Tioga for the federal contracts performed there.
Tell us what you see
These are a few starting points. Open the dashboard, find your county, and see how federal changes are reaching it. If you’re seeing effects the data don’t show yet, or there’s something you’d like the dashboard to track, let us know.