DOGE's Toll: DC Area Sheds More Jobs Than Any Metro in the Country

• April 22nd

by UrbanTurf Staff

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In news that we will call unsurprising, the DC area experienced the steepest job losses of any metro region in the country over the past year.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Monday that the region lost 103,900 jobs between January 2025 and January 2026. That figure dwarfed the second-largest loss of any major metro area, Boston-Cambridge-Newton, which shed 30,200 jobs.

The overwhelming driver behind those losses was the federal government's sweeping workforce reductions. Roughly 96% of all job losses in the DC region stemmed from federal layoffs, according to an analysis by the Brookings Institution, with approximately 54,000 of the roughly 56,000 jobs lost through the end of 2025 attributable directly to federal workforce cuts.

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Elon Musk under the Trump administration, began mass layoffs of federal employees in early 2025, and by mid-year, more than 59,000 federal payroll positions had been eliminated across the DMV, with an additional 130,000 workers placed on paid administrative leave. 

Over 150,000 federal employees took the administration up on its deferred resignation program — dubbed the "Fork in the Road" — a buyout arrangement that kept workers on the government's books and off the unemployment rolls until the fiscal year closed on September 30, 2025. That delayed the full picture from emerging in official data until BLS released employment figures for the final months of the year.

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/doges_toll_dc_area_sheds_more_jobs_than_any_metro_in_the_country/24548.