One objective of the second Trump administration has been to overhaul and reduce the size of the federal government. In the first few months, hard data showed no substantial decline in federal government employment, which was not unexpected. But with seven months of data now available, reductions in federal employment have become more apparent.<\/p>\n
This chart of the week tracks federal government employment\u2014from January 2016 to July 2025\u2014relative to its January 2025 level. As the chart shows, federal government employment has declined nearly 5 percent in the broader D.C. region since January 2025, 3.2 percent in the District, and 2.1 percent across the nation as a whole. The cuts to federal employment negatively affect not only those laid off but also many of the region\u2019s businesses\u2014which was a key finding from the third round of the D.C. Policy Center\u2019s Quarterly Business Sentiments Survey.<\/p>\n
Should current trends persist or worsen\u2014with more terminations or government employees not having their contracts renewed\u2014the federal employment outlook will become even bleaker, placing further strain on the regional and local economies.<\/p>\n
Data notes:<\/p>\n
Federal government employment data was obtained via FRED: District of Columbia<\/a> D.C. region<\/a>, and the nation.<\/a> The data are not seasonally adjusted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One objective of the second Trump administration has been to overhaul and reduce the size of the federal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":116407,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[84,1371,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-116406","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jobs","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-jobs","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116406\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/116407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}