Maryland has the second-highest concentration of federal employees of any U.S. jurisdiction, and proximity has everything to do with it.

The state is a straight shot down Interstate 95 to Washington, D.C.

Executive orders issued at the White House impact families in Maryland, including one of the first moves — to shutter USAID.

"It has been horrible. Since the first day when the executive order on foreign aid was released, which was the first day of the Trump administration, I mean, it's just been like one thing after another," one federal worker said. "It just feels like the bottom keeps dropping out, like, where is the bottom? Have we even hit it yet?"

The worker has a "shred" of a job left, the Maryland mother of two told 11 News. She's unsure how much longer her company, an international development contractor, will survive.

Out of 100 coworkers, she said less than 20 remain and they all work less than part-time. Her wages have been so sharply reduced that she applied for unemployment.

"I'm one of the lucky ones that still has a job, but I'm also part of a family in which both partners are in the same field. So, my husband is also facing job insecurity," said another federal worker. "In the neighborhood that I live in, a lot of people work in this field, and I can think of three couples — just off the top of my head — where the parents of families with children where both partners have either lost a job or are at risk of losing a job because they're in this field."

The worker is among more than 225,000 Maryland residents who are federal contractors, according to the state Department of Labor.

That's in addition to more than 325,000 federal civilian employees who call Maryland home. That number is starting to dwindle, according to the state's "Mass Layoff" dashboard.

"And it's just been depressing and devastating and concerning and everything else you can imagine," a federal worker said. "We're kind of in the middle of a storm, and I don't think we really know what's on the other side of it yet."

State data shows five rounds of mass layoffs already in February at four different Maryland-based international development firms, adding up to 978 jobs lost.

State officials are gearing up for an expected spike in federal unemployment claims.

"I don't want to sugarcoat it. It could be very challenging, depending on the volume value," said Portia Wu, Maryland's Department of Labor secretary. "We are planning for all sorts of different scenarios."