How could federal government funding cuts impact Pittsburgh's eds and meds economy?
The federal government employs thousands in the Pittsburgh region and funds research to the tune of billions of dollars.
But the Trump administration and Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency are looking at layoffs and massive funding cuts right in Pittsburgh's backyard.
On Valentine's Day, about 60 researchers at the National Energy Technology Laboratory in South Park got an email from Elon Musk and DOGE telling them their services were no longer required.
"'We do not find the need to keep your employment and you are now terminated.' But they were very cold, cold memos," a worker said.
The Trump administration says drastic cuts are necessary to reduce waste and tame the federal deficit.
"This country has gotten bloated and fat and disgusting," Mr. Trump said.
But the impact of the cuts is not limited to places like Washington, D.C., and northern Virginia. The federal government's tentacles run deep through Pittsburgh's regional economy, with 20,000 federal workers.
"The postal carriers we see every day are all federal workers here in town. The Army Corp of Engineers has a large presence, Housing and Urban Development has a large presence, the veteran's administration, the hospital here in Oakland, those are all federal employees," said Chris Briem with Pitt's Center for Social Research.
But they are just the most visible in a largely hidden economy that depends on billions of dollars every year in federal funding. Since the decline of the steel industry, Pittsburgh's economy has been based largely on eds and meds — its large educational and medical institutions.
Faced with massive cuts in research grants, the University of Pittsburgh has just implemented a hiring freeze, and Congressman Chris Deluzio says funding cuts will have a major impact on the region's employment and economic health.
"To see huge, hundreds of millions of dollars of cuts come to our region, especially around research at, say, Pitt and CMU, we would feel a lot of economic pain. A lot of jobs would be lost, a lot of folks would be hurt," Deluzio said.
Pitt is faced with losing $180 million from the National Institutes of Health, funding for cutting-edge medical research that employs hundreds of researchers and assistants.
But the region is also the recipient of thousands of other grants to places like the Energy Technology Lab, military defense grants to CMU's Software Engineering Institute, unknown millions to the Bettis national lab in West Mifflin, which engineers nuclear submarines for the U.S. Navy and grants to research organizations like the Rand Corporation, the international think tank with offices in Oakland.
"If we don't do this, America will go bankrupt," Musk said.
KDKA-TV reached out to Pennsylvania's Republican Sen. Dave McCormick and was promised a statement on the cuts but hasn't yet received one. But the VA hospital in Oakland has already lost research grants and is bracing for layoffs. The new secretary is projecting that 72,000 VA employees will lose their jobs nationwide. While Democrat Deluzio says government waste should be targeted, he says these cut to the core.
"They're all over the place. They're being pretty reckless. To be candid, they're gutting the core of what our government does — delivering veterans care, delivering Social Security benefits — to funnel literally trillions of dollars in their budget giveaway to huge corporations and billionaires," Deluzio said.
But the cuts and layoffs are not carved in stone. A judge just ordered those laid off at the Energy Lab to be reinstated with back pay. And the status of grant funding from the NIH and other departments is also a matter for the courts. The full impact here and nationally is still unknown and uncertainty fills the air.
