The Trump administration offered a buyout to nearly all 2.3 million federal workers in the country on Jan. 28th, 2025. This came a bit more than a week after the inauguration of President Donald Trump and a wave of executive orders, one of which paused federal hiring.
This buyout of federal workers wasn’t unforeseen, but the way it was given to federal workers was certainly out of the ordinary. Federal employees received an email with the subject line, “The Fork in the Road.” This email offered all federal employees eight months of pay if they resigned by the deadline of Feb. 6th, 2025. According to the email sent out by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), if they didn’t accept the buyout, they could be furloughed. This means that they would be placed in a temporary non-duty status without receiving any pay.
The emails didn’t stop there, as the administration tried to “weed out” as many federal employees as possible. One of Trump’s campaign promises was to reduce the size of the federal government, and his top advisor, Elon Musk, agreed with this policy. According to the Urban Institute, Musk, the billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, created the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to reduce the federal workforce by a whopping 75%. DOGE also had the goal of cutting costs to reduce the federal budget and debt.
To aid his efforts to get more employees to take the buyout, or to get frustrated and quit, Musk sent an email requiring employees to list five things they had done the week before. According to the Washington Post, chaos immediately ensued, as workers were looking to their higher-ups for further instruction while agency heads were giving conflicting responses. In further communication, he had said that not responding would be considered a resignation, enraging workers who believed that an elected official asking them for possibly sensitive information was uncalled for. The OPM later said that these emails didn’t require a response.
The New Yorker has found that most federal agency headquarters are located here in DC, Maryland, or Virginia. Many people, especially from Loudoun and Fairfax, live here and commute daily to Washington D.C. for work. Many of our neighbors and friends either work in the Federal Government or know someone who does. When Musk made the decision to cut the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the agency’s shutdown affected millions of people across the globe. However, it especially hit close to home as the agency’s main office in Washington D.C. laid off hundreds of workers, many of whom resided in NOVA.
Northern Virginia’s identity is deeply intertwined with federal agencies, and the region holds over 81,000 federal civilian jobs and an additional 175,000 federal employees according to Reuters. Some may work at government agencies like the aforementioned USAID, or they may work for federal contractors such as Leidos or Lockheed Martin. Every sector is being affected, and no job is safe. Currently, more than 275,000 civil service layoffs have been announced by the Trump administration. A large portion of that comes from the DMV.
Many of these workers are highly specialized in their area, and to randomly fire them without due notice can crucially affect them and their families. The jobs that these employees find after being laid off may not pertain to the specialized jobs they did while working for the federal government. According to the Washington Post, trend in unemployment is also being seen at job centers in the region, where some are seriously considering leaving the D.C. area in the hope of new opportunities. Many of these laid-off workers only know government life and putting them in another job may not allow them to utilize their skills as efficiently as before. It is easy for someone not in this area to claim that the government workers here are just collecting a paycheck, but that is usually not the case.
The cost of living in the D.C. area is steadily rising every day. Home prices keep increasing, grocery bills are higher and wages aren’t adjusting properly with this rise in cost. As uncertainty builds up, many may have to move to other regions if the pay from their new job cannot support their cost of living. This can be especially hard for families with children, as leaving the life some have created here can be difficult for the child. Northern Virginia is proud to have one of the highest-performing school systems in the country per Niche statistics, and the opportunities a child can get here are not comparable to many other places. Taking these opportunities away from children for any reason is an injustice to them.
Economists claim that this could be just the beginning. The local job market is already being strained, and many of those who were laid off are currently looking for resources from the State of Virginia to help them. As reported by the Virginia Employment Commission for the week of March 23, Virginia had a 28% increase in unemployment claims when compared to the week prior. Many of these claims included federal contractors, as Northern Virginia has accounted for almost half of all reported layoffs in the state. Interestingly enough, the layoffs don’t just stop at federal agencies.
Recently, layoffs have been targeting companies in the area that aren’t directly involved with the federal government, such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. According to FHFA press releases, Employees have been fired for various reasons, with some relating to anti-DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) policies, while others were related to Trump’s “work in-person” policies. The new Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) director, Bill Pulte Jr., grandson of the founder of the PulteGroup home development company, recently took over as chair of the agency and directed all workers at Freddie and Fannie to return to work in person.
According to Opensecrets.org, Pulte made significant donations to Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, and it seemed to pay off after Pulte was nominated by Trump to serve as the director of the FHFA. Pulte immediately got to work, and the first thing he wanted to tackle was to get employees back into buildings. Pulte claimed that these large buildings were empty and that these spaces needed to be utilized.
Telework was a lifesaver for many during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the D.C. area utilized the service largely by being ranked one of the top places to work from home according to FOX 5 DC. Many of these jobs could be done remotely without profit margins being impacted, as shown by Freddie and Fannie’s annual earnings reports. Cameras from Fox News were brought into Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to show the empty workspaces, and Pulte gave the cameras a tour of the “wasteful spending” being done when no employees were there. Pulte failed to recognize was that it was a hybrid day, which was a day when a majority of the employees were working from home. Nevertheless, These clips were played on Fox anchor Laura Ingraham’s segment, and outrage ensued. Subsequently, a mandate was sent out for all employees to return to work in person.
This highlights a larger shift in the workforce in the DC area. Layoffs in other industries (even non-government) could happen as more people are required to return to work in person. It seems that Trump is keen to push his policies, no matter what the facts say this time. The second-term president will put his people in power to push his policies wherever he can, and it seems that Northern Virginia is taking the brunt of it. According to WTOP, Trump has said that he wants to move a large number of federal jobs out of the DC area, and federal agencies are facing deadlines to submit plans for this move.
A large change is coming, and it could significantly alter the identity of our region for the foreseeable future.
