My wife works as a Technical Program Officer at USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance. She is an independent contractor.
As of Feb 1st, around 900 of her colleagues, mostly hired through large contracting organizations, have already been furloughed or fired, with no clarity whether they’ll be able to return.
* Resolves YES if she involuntarily no longer holds a position working at a USAID or subsequent entity like the State Department that had subsumed her prior role. Resolves NO if she remains employed doing the same job or a natural extension/evolution of her current role (like at the State Department) prior to April, is put on leave but with her contract intact or a new contract put in place prior to April, or if she decides to leave her current job voluntarily prior to market end date.
Related:
Update 2025-02-02 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): Resolution Criteria Clarification:
Formal Notice Requirement: The market will resolve NO as long as there has been no formal notice of the cancellation of her contract nor any new contract offered prior to April.
Administrative Leave or Limbo: Being placed on administrative leave or in a similar limbo state does not count as an involuntary loss of her position unless a formal cancellation is communicated.
Trigger for YES: Receiving a formal notice that cancels her contract will trigger a YES resolution unless a new contract is put in place prior to April.
See also:
1,000🏅 Top traders
| # | Name | Total profit |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ṁ157 | |
| 2 | Ṁ152 | |
| 3 | Ṁ87 | |
| 4 | Ṁ72 | |
| 5 | Ṁ60 |
Thanks Manifold community for keeping our expectations in check. Honestly surprised it lasted this long; in my opinion, the correct price for anyone at USAID should be higher than it was in this market.
She and I will be fine, just very discouraging and scary to see how Musk, who used to be someone I admired, has really gone off the deep end and abandoned any sense of critical thinking. Spreading misinformation that simply confirms his own (now conspiratorial) biases and lots of throwing the baby out with the bathwater in a way that is dangerous to our separation of powers.
If you consider yourself an Effective Altruist or rationalist, it’s hard to see how such an abrupt destruction of a global aid and development industry is +EV.
Here’s a brief description of what my wife was doing at USAID:
Oversaw over $8 million in US grants and cooperative agreements that did the following:
Develop standards and guidelines for all mobile health clinics around the world.
Develop referral pathways for pregnant women in conflict areas to ensure they were receiving needed care.
Train frontline humanitarian workers on infectious disease outbreak mitigation and prevention.
Train physicians and EMTs in warzones on trauma care and surgery best practices.
Ensure local doctors in crisis affected communities have basic level mental health care training.
Support WHO coordination efforts in places like Sudan, Niger, Myanmar, Burkina Faso, Gaza, Afghanistan.
Ensure medicines can safely reach isolated communities in humanitarian settings.
Thanks again everyone for your support and kindness.
What is her hiring mechanism (direct hire or PSC)?
@ChristopherMelton PSC, directly contracted with the government but not direct hire. She has not been furloughed like many of her colleagues through institutional support contractors, but like pretty everyone else at USAID, she has lost access to her systems and is effectively on administrative leave.
Thousands of personal services contractors and civil servants lost access to email and USAID systems overnight.
Speaking to the press in El Salvador Monday, Rubio was asked about the arguments that USAID’s work is vital to national security and promoting US interests.
“There are things that USAID, that we do through USAID, that we should continue to do, and we will continue to do,” he said.
“This is not about ending the programs that USAID does, per se,” he said. “There are things that it does that are good and there are things that it does that we have strong questions about.”
@KJW_01294 So long as she has not received formal notice of the cancellation of her contract, this market will resolve NO.
I’ll create a different market for whether she’ll experience an interruption in pay.