For about a year now, the labor market has existed in a state of eerie calm: Not many people were losing their jobs or quitting, but not many of those seeking work were getting job offers.

The mass layoffs now underway across the federal government, along with its employees who are voluntarily heading for the exits, could disrupt that uneasy equilibrium.

While unemployment is relatively low at 4.1%, those losing their positions could face a difficult time finding work, depending on how well their skills translate to a private sector that does not seem eager to hire.

“Federal workers all across the country are starting to look, and it’s impacting people everywhere,” said Cory Stahle, an economist at the job search platform Indeed. “It’s hard to think this isn’t going to stress test the labor market in the coming months.”

On the eve of the Trump administration, the federal government’s executive branch employed about 2.3 million civilians. It’s not clear how many of those will end up being cut, and how many will get their jobs back after lawsuits over those terminations work through the courts.

But the impact of the pace at which government spending is being slashed, along with instructions from the White House budget office for agencies to slice even deeper, could be meaningful.

“The firing on the government side is real,” said Thomas Barkin, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond in Virginia, at an event late last month. “It’s happening.”

Gregory Daco, chief U.S. economist at the accounting firm EY-Parthenon, estimates that in the most extreme case, 1 million jobs could be trimmed overall. That estimate assumes 500,000 government contractors are laid off alongside 250,000 federal workers and another 250,000 in job losses at the state and local government levels. Such a winnowing would exert a cumulative drag on gross domestic product of as much as 1% over time, Daco said.

Other estimates suggest the hit could be more contained. Michael Pugliese, a senior economist at Wells Fargo, said federal layoffs would present “only a small headwind to broader economic growth” in the months ahead.

The impact will depend on how many of those workers are absorbed into other jobs, and how quickly. Their prospects vary widely with their skill sets, industries and willingness to relocate.

Chmura Economics & Analytics, a labor market research firm, analyzed the likely distribution of laid-off probationary workers, who have been targeted first. Their chances tend to be better in larger cities than in rural areas. In the first round of announced terminations, there were 718 open jobs for every recently hired worker laid off in the Baltimore metropolitan area, for example, and only three in Oglala Lakota County, South Dakota.

Finding an open job with the right skill requirements could make things more challenging. In the Washington metropolitan area in mid-February, there were 11,600 postings for business operations specialists, but for just 106 tax examiners and one agricultural inspector.

Not everybody will have trouble finding a new job. In any market, those pushed out of health care roles — about 16% of the federal workforce, according to an analysis by the Pew Research Center — are likely to find plenty of options. The same is true of people with advanced technology experience, whom the federal government had been focused on hiring in recent years.

The future looks cloudier for those whose roles were highly government-specific, and whose fields have been decimated by the Trump administration’s crackdown on federal agencies. That includes the U.S. Agency for International Development.

The United States was the single largest global source of foreign aid, and the cancellation of thousands of contracts has forced mass layoffs among the companies that depended on them, leaving their workers with nowhere to go for work with a similar mission.

Wayan Vota, who was laid off from his USAID-funded company at the end of January, calls it an “extinction event” for the sector. To help aid workers move forward, he started a Substack newsletter geared toward helping international development professionals retool their résumés and translate their skills for private companies. Many have skills managing complex supply chains in unstable countries, which could be useful for large retailers.

“I think someone who has been getting HIV medicines to rural clinics in Mozambique has all the skills, and then some, to get cereal boxes onto the shelves of Walmart,” said Vota, 52, who is based in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.