The broader St. Louis economy would not necessarily be left in turmoil if the Trump administration cuts some of the nearly 26,000 federal employees in the region, but there could be negative trickle-down effects, local economists said.
“We're in a wait-and-see kind of mode,” said Kyle Anderson, executive director of the Southwest Illinois Leadership Council, an economic development group that's watching places like Scott Air Force Base in the Metro East.
The St. Louis metropolitan area, which includes 15 counties in both Missouri and Illinois, employed 25,600 federal workers at the end of 2024, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
Most in the St. Louis region work at Scott Air Force Base, which hosts the U.S. Transportation Command. Between the Air Force and Army, the base employs roughly 13,000 people — 5,100 of whom are civilians.
In 2010, the Southwest Illinois Leadership Council estimated the economic impact of Scott Air Force Base on the local economy to be $3.2 billion. Currently, the group is tabulating a newer figure to be released later this spring.
“Selfishly, obviously, from our regional perspective, we want every resource that can be invested in Scott Air Force Base to be invested in Scott Air Force Base,” Anderson said. “We know it is important to our local economy, but more importantly, to the nation's economy, as well as the nation's security.”
The Department of Defense estimates it will reduce its civilian probationary workforce by 5% to 8% across the country, according to a statement released last month.
If the Trump administration continues its purge of the federal workforce, Glenn MacDonald, an economics professor at Washington University, believes that could affect 10% locally at most, meaning about 2,500 employees.
While it would be a big deal to the people who lose their jobs, it shouldn’t be a broader problem for the St. Louis-area economy, MacDonald said.
“2,500 is not 0 — that's for sure,” MacDonald said. “But in terms of the St Louis economy, we're a city of 2.5 million people and a labor force of a 1.5 million, so 2,500 is just pretty small in that context.”
It helps that the federal employees living and working in the region are scattered throughout multiple types of occupations, he said.
“If you're worried that this kind of reduction in employment would really harm the St Louis economy, that would have to be a big exaggeration,” he said.
But Anne Winkler, an economics professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, said there’s broader implications at play.
“When it affects, for example, the Arch, then it affects tourism to the Arch,” Winkler said. “It affects restaurants and small businesses, and so the spillovers and linkages with respect to the federal workforce are probably much bigger than an individual might think.”
Probationary employees at the Gateway Arch National Park have been terminated in recent weeks, St. Louis Public Radio has reported. If the visitor experience gets worse, that’s when those spillover effects might be felt, Winkler said.
“We're not Yosemite, but that Arch is very important to our local economy,” she said.
Samuel Mahaney, director of the Policy and Armed Forces Research and Development Institute at Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla, said there’s little legitimate concern from employees at Fort Leonard Wood.
“Anytime you're in a situation where there's unknown out there and it affects your livelihood, it's a big deal,” said Mahaney, a retired two-star Air Force general.
The estimate for the St. Louis metro area doesn’t include Pulaski County, Missouri — home to more than 3,000 people who work for the federal government in the Missouri Ozarks, making up 15% of the local workforce, according to the Washington Post.
Mahaney said the lack of authoritative communication to employees at Fort Leonard Wood and social media rumors have created confusion. The threat of job loss also jeopardizes what many in the area believe to be secure jobs, he said.
“It would undercut confidence in those areas where corporations or small businesses had made decisions based on that kind of economic stability that comes from those government employees,” Mahaney said.
While he and the economists are sympathetic to wanting to make the government more efficient, Mahaney said that the Trump administration needs to understand it’s dealing with human beings.
“This can affect families and children across the board,” Mahaney said. “So when we look at this, it's not just an economic impact issue. This is a family issue.”
While there haven’t been reports of widespread layoffs at any locations in the region, there’s one thing all seem to agree on: It’s hard to predict the impact with so few details.
“This is one of those subjects, where we know so little about what's happening, and it's happening kind of quickly, that it's really hard to have any very kind of firm opinions about how this is all likely to shake out,” MacDonald said.
