Caitlynn Belliveau worked for the Department of Veterans Affairs in Sioux Falls until she accepted a buyout as part of the Trump administration’s reduction of the federal workforce. (Photo by Makenzie Huber/South Dakota Searchlight)

Caitlynn Belliveau made a comfortable salary as a human resources specialist at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Sioux Falls — enough to support her four children and husband as the sole income earner and make the mortgage payments on their Worthing house.

But when the Trump administration offered her a buyout — officially called a deferred resignation — she took it, receiving four months of paid leave in exchange for quitting her job. She feared she could lose her job abruptly later if she didn’t accept.

After those payments stopped, Belliveau applied for food assistance.

She finally started work as an educational support professional for the Sioux Falls School District this month after over a dozen interviews in the last three months went nowhere in what she called a “hellscape of a job market.” More than a million workers have been laid off across the country this year, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas, making this year the worst for layoff notices since 2009.

Within that number are the roughly 154,000 federal employees who took deferred resignations offered by the Trump administration earlier this year as a way to reduce the size of the federal workforce. Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor told Fox Business in August he expects the total decrease in the federal workforce to reach more than 300,000 eventually.

While Belliveau is working in the school district, she’s also working toward her second master’s degree in teaching (her first master’s was in higher education administration) in hopes of improving her prospects. She’s considering moving out of the state or country in hopes of finding better employment.

The 38-year-old is struggling to figure out the best path forward to support her family.

“Federal workers have families and mortgages and need to eat and pay bills,” she said.

While the Trump administration has described its actions as dismantling bureaucracy, Belliveau disputes that characterization.

“We’re not dismantling bureaucracy,” she said. “We’re laying people off. No other company could lay off hundreds of thousands of people without the public being up in arms. It’s crazy to me that this is being celebrated or something they’re proud about.”

The Trump administration’s cuts and layoffs “waged war on federal employees,” she said, and will hurt taxpayers.

“The bureaucracy will remain, but there will be fewer people who know how to navigate that bureaucracy,” Belliveau said.

Belliveau had planned to retire from her federal career. She is a subject matter expert on employee and labor relations. Getting rid of people like her opens up agencies to liability, she said, since it takes years to become an expert on such “incredibly complicated and delicate” subjects.

“You have supervisors who are used to having someone like myself saying, ‘You can’t do that because of this law, regulation or section in a master agreement,’” Belliveau said. “It will cost us more.”