- \n
- Since January 2025, the DMV region has shed federal jobs at a faster rate than the nation, while private sector job growth has plateaued.<\/li>\n
- The DMV region\u2019s unemployment rate has increased at a significantly higher pace than the nation\u2019s, with the share of unemployed suburban workers growing the most.<\/li>\n
- After a strong year of venture capital activity, venture capital flows into the DMV region have slowed dramatically since January 2025, while continuing to grow nationally.<\/li>\n
- The number of homes for sale in the DMV region is up by 64% since last June, far surpassing the rate of change nationally and in other major metro areas.<\/li>\n
- Data on the DMV region\u2019s popularity with business and leisure visitors show mixed signs of resilience and potential softness.<\/li>\n
- Both violent and property crime incidence are down year-over-year in the DMV region.<\/li>\n
- More households in the DMV region are showing signs of financial distress.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
This makes sense.\u00a0 Our region\u2019s economy is more dependent on federal jobs and spending than almost any other place in America.\u00a0 Leaders in every local jurisdiction are worried about this \u2013 and especially what the future holds over the next three years of the Trump administration.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s even more interesting is the jurisdiction-specific information inside Brookings\u2019s DMV Monitor<\/a>.\u00a0 Here, Brookings tracks several key economic indicators for up to 11 jurisdictions in the region: the District of Columbia; Charles, Montgomery and Prince George\u2019s counties in Maryland; and Alexandria City and Arlington, Fairfax, Fauquier, Loudoun, Prince William and Stafford counties in Virginia.\u00a0 Not every jurisdiction is tracked on every measure, but it\u2019s still as comprehensive \u2013 and recent \u2013 as any other reported data.\u00a0 The data tracks changes in these indicators from June 2024 through June 2025.\u00a0 That gives us a year-to-year comparison, with seasonality removed, of the pre-Trump and post-Trump worlds.<\/p>\n
The DMV Monitor chronicles regionwide suffering on most measures.\u00a0 That said, MoCo often shows up as one of the worst-hit jurisdictions.\u00a0 Here are the measures on which MoCo fares worst or second-worst.<\/p>\n
Jobs<\/strong><\/p>\n
In terms of total jobs, private jobs and federal jobs, MoCo had the worst percentage losses of the 11 tracked jurisdictions from June 2024 through June 2025.\u00a0 How many of those private jobs were tied to federal contracting?<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Brookings-DMV-Tracker-Total-Jobs-624-625.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Brookings-DMV-Tracker-Private-Jobs-624-625.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Brookings-DMV-Tracker-Federal-Jobs-624-625.png\")
<\/p>\nFederal Obligations<\/strong><\/p>\n
Brookings defines federal obligations as \u201cLegally-binding funds committed to recipients through federally-awarded grants, contracts, loans, and cooperative agreements.\u201d\u00a0 MoCo had the biggest 12-month percentage loss of any tracked jurisdiction.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Brookings-DMV-Tracker-Federal-Obligations-624-625.png\")
<\/p>\nJob Postings<\/strong><\/p>\n
MoCo had the second-worst percentage loss in job postings with a 7.8% decline.\u00a0 Only Fauquier County, with a 34.7% loss, did worse than we did.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Brookings-DMV-Tracker-Total-Job-Postings-624-625.png\")
<\/p>\nMass Layoff Notifications<\/strong><\/p>\n
Brookings only tracked four jurisdictions on change in notifications for closures or layoffs by qualified employers under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act in the year ended June 2025.\u00a0 Here is how those jurisdictions fared.<\/p>\n
Fairfax County: -59.7%<\/p>\n
Prince George\u2019s County: -38.4%<\/p>\n
District of Columbia: +259.9%<\/p>\n
Montgomery County: +618.9%<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Brookings-DMV-Tracker-Mass-Layoff-Notifications-624-625.png\")
<\/p>\nHotel Revenue per Available Room<\/strong><\/p>\n
MoCo saw a 10.3% drop in hotel revenue per available room in the year ended June 2025, the worst in the region.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Brookings-DMV-Tracker-Hotel-Revenue-per-Room-624-625.png\")
<\/p>\nActive Residential Listings<\/strong><\/p>\n
From June 2024 through June 2025, MoCo saw an increase of 99.6% in active for-sale residential listings.\u00a0 This was second only to Stafford County (up 105.8%).\u00a0 This may be a good thing because it means that more houses are available for buyers.\u00a0 However\u2026<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Brookings-DMV-Tracker-Active-Residential-Listings-624-625.png\")
<\/p>\nMedian Residential Listing Price<\/strong><\/p>\n
Over the year ended June 2025, MoCo saw a 7.3% drop in median residential listing price.\u00a0 Only Alexandria (-15.8%) had a bigger decline.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Brookings-DMV-Tracker-Median-Listing-Price-624-625.png\")
<\/p>\nThese last two stats tell a good news\/bad news story.\u00a0 MoCo and the rest of the region have seen tight for-sale inventories and low days on market over the last few years, leading to bidding wars and escalating home prices.\u00a0 If those factors ease, that\u2019s welcome news for home buyers.\u00a0 However, if the cause is generalized economic weakness, it may eventually show up in slow growth or even declines in the assessable property base.\u00a0 That would cause budget headaches for the county government and \u2013 of course! \u2013 calls for property tax hikes.\u00a0 It\u2019s too soon to tell if that scenario will take hold.<\/p>\n
There are a few other measures on which MoCo is not an outlier and some (like air passengers and consumer prices) on which it is not tracked.\u00a0 But the above data spells out a narrative of economic weakness that goes beyond regional trends.\u00a0 If it doesn\u2019t make its way into the county\u2019s revenue estimates for next year, it should.<\/p>\n
County leaders are going to blame all of this on Trump, and they are partially right.\u00a0 The Trump administration\u2019s stance on health research and food and drug safety is particularly injurious to MoCo, which houses the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration.\u00a0 But it\u2019s not all Trump\u2019s fault since MoCo\u2019s economy has lagged the rest of the region for many years<\/a>.\u00a0 That long-term economic non-competitiveness has left us in a particularly vulnerable state when facing the predations of Trump and his minions.<\/p>\n
MoCo leaders, the time to start looking at restraints on county spending is now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Adam Pagnucco. Last week, the Brookings Institution released a report on the early impacts of federal government…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":264103,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[138045,64,79,2142,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-264102","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-adam-pagnucco","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-economy","11":"tag-federal-government","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115288261817185426","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264102\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/264103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}