Almost a Thousand NOAA Employees Have Been Fired — Here’s How That Could Impact Homeowners Insurance

With multiple federal agencies in its crosshairs, the impact of the Trump administration’s mass firings could ripple down to the American public.

Since taking office in January, President Trump and his administration have fired thousands of federal workers — a movement that some judges are calling illegal.

Still, at the time of this writing, tens of thousands of federal workers have lost their jobs, with more substantial layoffs still planned. Cuts are impacting a slew of federal agencies from the Education Department to the Environmental Protection Agency to the Social Security Administration, as well as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA.

In fact, according to Senator Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), ranking member on the Senate Committee overseeing NOAA, at least 880 of its employees have already been fired.

These firings, Cantwell says, “jeopardize our ability to forecast and respond to extreme weather events like hurricanes, wildfires and floods.”

How might NOAA firings impact Americans?

It might not seem at first like NOAA layoffs — even massive ones — would have the potential to put “communities in harm’s way,” as Cantwell says.

But NOAA is the foremost U.S. agency responsible for predicting the weather, researching climate change and disseminating that information with the general public — not to mention its stewardship mission towards conserving and managing vulnerable marine ecosystems.

And these firings come in the midst of an onslaught of catastrophic weather events, including a proliferation of storms leaving behind more than $1 billion in damage and extreme temperatures that gave 2024 the distinction of being the hottest year on record — beating out the second-hottest year on record, 2023.

In other words, cuts to NOAA could hamper our ability as a nation to predict storms and other weather events at a moment when the need for those services is more urgent than ever.

Without sufficient predictions, those in the path of upcoming weather events might have less of the information they need to prepare for them. Per reporting from the Washington Post, terminated employees include those at offices whose responsibilities include “warning the public about tsunamis, tornadoes and hurricanes,” as well as “an entire team dedicated to communicating NOAA’s work and science to the public.”

Additionally, because many insurance providers rely on NOAA data in order to understand weather-related risks and calculate policy prices, the firings could also impact the homeowners insurance industry — which, of course, is already floundering.

Homeowners insurance in the wake of NOAA cuts

While we can’t make any firm predictions about how, exactly, NOAA cuts might impact homeowners insurance, we can say that more burdens for already-struggling insurance companies may play out badly for policyholders.

These cuts are coming at a time when major insurers are requesting double-digit rate hikes in disaster-prone markets — and substantially increasing premiums in non-disaster-prone markets as well in an effort to recoup losses.

And even those who make higher-than-average premium payments may find themselves underinsured in the confluence of more dire disasters and a market ravaged by inflation. Many victims of the recent spate of LA fires, for example, are finding they don’t have enough insurance to rebuild their homes without paying thousands of dollars out of pocket.

If you’re a homeowner, now is a great time to review your own homeowners insurance policy to ensure you understand how much coverage you have and what types of events are excluded from coverage. And if you feel like you’re paying too much, it might also be worthwhile to shop around.

Changing insurance plans can save you hundreds of dollars over the course of a year — a trend that holds true for homeowners policies as well as auto and renters insurance. Although it still requires a bit of homework, you should still try to compare quotes from multiple lenders — that half hour you spend on the phone could mean serious savings in a precarious financial time.