Federal hiring freeze: Longer waits, unemployment lines for some Texans

Cody Edwards thought he had landed his dream job. The Irving man was so excited to move to Port Aransas on New Year's Eve with his pregnant wife to start a new job at the Padre Island National Seashore, also known as PINS, on Jan. 8.

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He reached out to members of Congress, including the office of U.S. Rep. Marc Veasey, D-Fort Worth, which contacted several people, especially a National Park Service legislative liaison who helped Edwards regain his job as a visitor use assistant at PINS.

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"We have a great deal of federal dollars in Ft Worth and this will hurt us more than others," Veasey posted on Facebook after the hiring freeze was put in place last month.

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Veasey is upset about the ongoing freeze and notes that there are at least 170 federal employee job openings in North Texas within a 50 mile radius of Arlington that for now will remain unfilled. That doesn't include unpaid internships.

"The federal hiring freeze further burdens our already short-staffed federal agencies across the country," he said. "Instead of trying to increase the efficiency of our federal government, President Trump has chosen to implement a policy that means our nation's veterans will face longer wait times for the benefits they have rightfully earned, senior citizens may experience a lag in receiving their social security benefits, and women and children may not be able to access food assistance they are entitled to receive."

He said he's also concerned about the FAA, which hired around 4,700 new air traffic controllers across the county over the past five years and plans to hire more than 7,400 more controllers in the next five years. He cosponsored the Air Traffic Controller Hiring Improvement Act of 2016 and is worried about how the hiring freeze could impact the FAA, which he said has "faced a number of hiring challenges in recent years."