Roughly 96% of all job losses in the D.C. region last year came from federal layoffs, the liberal Brookings Institution reported this month.
The think tank’s analysis of federal data found that the District and surrounding counties in Maryland and Virginia ended 2025 with roughly 56,000 fewer jobs than a year before.
That included 54,000 federal workers who lost their jobs to the Trump administration’s efforts to shrink the size of government.
Most of the remaining 2,000 job losses were in the professional and business sector, including many federal contractors and related services, according to the group’s analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
“The main takeaway from these findings is that federal downsizing has severely damaged the region’s economy, driving overall job growth down and unemployment up,” Glencora Haskins, a Brookings analyst and co-author of the report, said in an email.
Ms. Haskins said the year-over-year job losses were unprecedented for the nation’s capital over the past 35 years. She noted that the D.C. metro area came closest during recessions at the end of 1991 and 2008, each of which shed over 36,000 jobs.
It remains unclear how many of the region’s 54,000 federal layoffs last year were voluntary.
According to the Office of Personnel Management, roughly 150,000 federal workers nationwide accepted the Trump administration’s offer of a federal contract buyout to retire from their jobs last year.
The agency, which manages the federal workforce, did not say how many of this group lived in the D.C. area. However, 20% of federal workers lived in the region before the layoffs.
In a statement emailed to The Washington Times, a White House spokesman praised the report’s numbers as confirmation that the region needs to rely less on unsustainable government spending hikes.
“Washington, D.C.’s overreliance on federal government bloat to buoy its economy has contributed to persistently high unemployment rates, with DC often having the highest unemployment rate in the country well before this Administration,” said Kush Desai, the White House spokesman.
Mr. Desai touted the Trump administration’s “robust supply-side agenda to drive private sector job and investment growth” as a substitute for federal funds.
Several analysts not involved with the Brookings report noted that commercial real estate values plunged by billions of dollars in the District and neighboring suburbs as the Biden administration extended pandemic-era telework policies.
That led to declines in the area’s tax revenues, office footprint and daily commute, forcing restaurants and other businesses to close.
The Trump administration ordered federal workers back to their offices early last year, but soon began firing them in waves.
“It is hard to attribute a separate value for each,” said Yesim Sayin, executive director of the nonpartisan D.C. Policy Center. “For sure, remote work led to the long-term commercial real estate crises, and federal layoffs just made things worse.”
Local impacts
D.C.’s Office of the Chief Financial Officer, an independent agency with a federal mandate to oversee the city’s financial stability, estimated this week that federal agencies in the District had a net loss of 22,356 jobs and $3.656 billion in annualized pay last year.
“Both expanded remote work and last year’s federal downsizing are contributing to the District’s current economic challenges,” Fitzroy Lee, the District’s deputy CFO and chief economist, said Thursday. “Falling property values since the pandemic continue to weigh on real property tax revenue growth.”
He noted that real property tax revenue has declined each year since the pandemic and is expected to fall again — an abrupt reversal from an earlier 2% annual growth rate.
The Brookings report also noted sharp rises in unemployment, especially among Black and female workers in the District and Maryland.
The Maryland data included Montgomery, Charles and Prince George’s counties, home to various federal science, health and regulatory agencies.
Bernard Flowers, a former Defense Department adviser who lives in Maryland, said it’s time for his state to reconsider its financial reliance on government payrolls and contracts.
“Maryland should be a hub for technology, advanced manufacturing, energy innovation and small business growth, not just federal agencies and contractors,” said Mr. Flowers, a member of the National Center for Public Policy Research’s Project 21, a network of Black conservatives.
The Brookings report found that unemployment also rose last year in the Virginia counties of Alexandria, Fairfax, Loudoun, Stafford, Fauquier and Prince William.
“Virginia often feels the effects through contractors and defense-related services, while Maryland sees it through federal labs, health care systems and research agencies,” said Tishayla J. Williams, an Army veteran and workforce analyst based in Richmond.
Future trends
Baruch Feigenbaum, an analyst at the libertarian Reason Foundation, noted that most of last year’s layoffs targeted midlevel management jobs at the Defense, Education, State, and Housing and Urban Development departments.
“This reflects the administration’s preference to significantly reduce the Department of Education, participate in fewer diplomatic missions and de-emphasize the Biden administration’s focus on core urban cities,” Mr. Feigenbaum said. “Department of Defense had the most layoffs, but that’s because it is so large.”
Michael New, a professor of social research at D.C.’s Catholic University of America, noted that only about 4% of Marylanders and Virginians work for the federal government.
He said the District was hit hardest because roughly 40% of city residents are federal workers.
“The Brookings report indicates that there are some employment increases in construction, education, health, leisure and hospitality,” Mr. New said. “These sectors will likely continue to grow in D.C. and elsewhere since in many cases they are resistant to automation and not disproportionately reliant on federal workers.”
