What will Donald Trump returning to the White House in January mean for federal workers in the Northern Virginia area? It’s too early to tell, but it’s probably not good.
Trump has long been a proponent of moving work from the public to the private sector; he’s campaigned on eliminating $2 trillion of government spending, about one-third of the federal budget, without saying where the cuts would be made and putting Elon Musk in charge of the program.
His platform has called for the relocation of federal agencies employing more than 100,000 federal workers from the D.C. area to other parts of the country. The region has more than 370,000 government employees, with average salaries over $100,000 a year. Additionally, the region has many government contractors.
“So if you were to send 10,000 of these jobs to Missouri or to Texas or to Nebraska or someplace else, you start adding up a lot of purchasing power that is leaving the region,” Terry Clower, director of the Center for Regional Analysis at George Mason University and a professor of public policy at the Schar School of Policy and Government, told the Washington Business Journal.
Project 2025, a package of policy proposals from the Heritage Foundation, calls for dissolving multiple federal agencies and the enforcement of Schedule F, which would allow the administration to replace career federal workers with appointees who would be screened for ideological loyalty.
Trump has disavowed Project 2025, but many current and former members of his administration and campaign are connected with the proposals, and there’s little in there that doesn’t jibe with his preferences — indeed, Schedule F was put into place in the last months of his term but wasn’t enforced. President Joe Biden unwound the program.
Clower told ALXNow that a lot will likely depend on whether Republicans retain control of the House. At the moment, it’s too close to call, as votes are still being counted.
“If the Trump administration has both houses of Congress on its side, we could possibly see new efforts to expand privatization of federal activities,” Clower said.
There’s a good chance current federal workers could go to work for a new private-sector contractor, but Clower said, “There is no guarantee those jobs would remain here.”
Sen. Mark Warner on Thursday said he hoped Trump would not pursue massive cuts and relocations. NoVA and Hampton Roads would be hit the hardest.
“There is no state in the nation that gets hurt worse than Virginia when we have government shutdowns … when we in Congress don’t do our job, because we have not only a massive federal workforce, but we have a huge contractor workforce as well,” Warner said.
Trump’s first term included the moving of two U.S. Department of Agriculture labs to the Kansas City area, leaving many D.C.-area workers behind. A 2023 report by the Government Accountability Office found that the agency suffered in terms of productivity and employee diversity, and that the costs and benefits were not thoroughly researched.
Between privatization and the elimination of agencies, the professor said, “We could see a dramatic downward shift in total federal employment in this region.”
Nothing will happen right away, Clower told ALXNow — the budget process can be a slow one, and we’ll know more in the late spring. But “If Mr. Trump and his administration take up their promised ‘drain the swamp’ initiatives, Alexandria and the rest of the region will feel the consequences,” he said.
Feature image, stock.adobe.com
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