White suburbanites bear brunt as unemployment surges from Trump-era federal job cuts in D.C. area

Trump administration layoffs of federal workers have driven up unemployment faster among affluent White suburbanites than Black residents in the D.C. area, inverting longstanding trends, a demographic analysis shows.

Unemployment in the D.C. metro area rose fastest from June 2024 to June 2025 among White residents in the prosperous suburban enclaves of Maryland and Virginia, the DMV Monitor, a D.C.-Maryland-Virginia page on the left-leaning Brookings Institution website, reported Wednesday.

Researchers found that the unemployment rate for White residents increased by 0.55 percentage points, to 2.5%. Comparatively, the unemployment rate for Black residents increased by 0.41 percentage points, to 6.2%.

Tracy Loh, a Brookings fellow and the report’s co-author, said it shows that the Trump layoffs are hitting the region’s middle class harder than its “historically disadvantaged” residents.

“These findings reinforce that the DMV economy is diverging from national trends,” Ms. Loh said in an email.

Overall, the report noted that the D.C.-Maryland-Virginia unemployment rate rose by 0.59 percentage points, to 3.6%, as 46,000 federal workers lost their jobs in the first six months of the Trump administration.

By comparison, unemployment nationwide grew by 0.07 points, to 4.1%. That included an increase of 0.05 points to 4% for large cities. In both cases, Black unemployment drove the increases, while White unemployment fell.

According to the report, the demographic breakdown shows a narrowing of traditional wealth disparities between White and Black area residents.

“Though the unemployment gap between white workers and workers of color remains higher in the District than in the suburbs, this may change if disparities continue to worsen in Northern Virginia and Southern Maryland,” the authors wrote.

The report urges private sector leaders and elected officials to work together “to reverse the metro area’s labor market stagnation, diversify and grow its economy, and reduce disparities to prevent long-run damage.”

A White House official declined to comment on the report.

’Overdue market correction’

President Trump’s efforts to reduce the federal government’s size and scope have taken a heavy toll on the local economy since his return to office in January.

The Office of Personnel Management estimates that 300,000 of the nation’s 2.5 million federal workers had left the federal government by the end of last month.

Roughly 1 in 5 federal workers live in the D.C. metro area, as do 1 in 4 private government contractors.

More cuts are looming. Mr. Trump is trying to fire 10,000 more federal workers during the government shutdown. A federal judge temporarily halted that plan this week while legal challenges unfold.

In recent weeks, the Trump administration has defended the layoffs as a necessary rightsizing of the area’s economy and pledged that private industry growth will revive the job market.

Some in the private sector agree. Chad D. Cummings, a Florida-based attorney who represents aerospace and defense contractors in Maryland and Virginia, said his clients view the federal layoffs as “an overdue market correction” to decades of unsustainable federal workforce growth.

“The federal government was never intended to swell to such a behemoth mass,” Mr. Cummings said in an email. “What we are seeing is only a regression to mean, and the free market will absorb the ripples.”

It remains unclear where laid-off federal workers in Maryland and Virginia will go.

Angelica Gianchandani, a marketing instructor at New York University, said those who lack marketable technology skills will likely struggle as Mr. Trump “dismantles the public workforce in the name of efficiency.”

“As automation accelerates, new patterns of job displacement may appear, especially in white-collar and professional roles,” Ms. Gianchandani said Thursday. “Projects in infrastructure, defense and energy will take years to materialize, and many displaced workers do not yet have the training for them.”

Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat who has joined local protests against the layoffs, pledged to keep federal workers in the area.

“I will continue to stand with those fighting these illegal actions in the courts, where this Administration’s latest attempt to weaponize this shutdown and terrorize more federal workers has already been put on hold,” Mr. Van Hollen said Thursday in a statement. “Public servants are vital to the success of our country, and I will always have their backs.”

Yesim Sayin, executive director of the nonpartisan D.C. Policy Center, said the Brookings report confirms that strains on the local labor market are “unlikely to ease” soon.

“Layoffs are affecting not only federal employees, but also the many contractors who depend on federal work,” Ms. Sayin said Thursday. “Together, they represent a large and highly skilled segment of the region’s college-educated professionals in business, technical and professional services. Unfortunately, employment opportunities in these sectors have contracted in recent months, compounding the economic pressure.”