The Washington region lost 100,500 jobs between May 2025 and May 2026, with more than half of those cuts coming from the federal government, according to data released Wednesday by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments.

For Reston and the rest of Fairfax County, the numbers land harder than almost anywhere else: the county had an estimated 80,000 residents working directly for the federal government at the start of 2025, not counting contractors.

The roughly 3 percent regional employment drop was the largest year-over-year decline among all 56 major metro areas in the country, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics figures cited by the COG economic dashboard.

Fairfax County's exposure

Fairfax County's unemployment rate jumped from 2.7 percent to 3.8 percent between January 2025 and January 2026, adding 6,005 unemployed residents in a single year, according to state workforce data reported by WTOP. More recent county-level figures were not available, though Northern Virginia's overall rate stood at 3.3 percent in May 2026.

The county's Economic Development Authority projected in spring 2025 that a 10 percent federal workforce reduction would translate to more than 28,000 lost jobs in Fairfax County alone, including contractors, according to FFXnow reporting on county data.

The professional services sector has also taken hits as federal budget cuts ripple outward. General Dynamics Information Technology filed notice of 174 Pentagon worker layoffs, with cuts expected in August 2026, according to the COG report.

County response: reskilling over panic

Fairfax County Executive Bryan Hill acknowledged the rising unemployment in an April 2026 interview with WTOP but pointed to openings still available across the region.

"I still have 66,000 job openings as we speak in Northern Virginia," Hill said in April, framing the challenge as a skills-matching problem rather than a jobs shortage. The county is focused on helping displaced workers "recalibrate and reskill," he said.

Keith Waters, assistant director of the Center for Regional Analysis at George Mason University, told WTOP in April that the region is "underperforming the U.S. as a whole" and that the job losses reflect a continuing contraction of the federal workforce following the deferred retirement package offered in October 2025.

The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors launched an online resource hub earlier this year for federal workers and contractors affected by the cuts, according to Patch.

Still below the national average

Despite the losses, the DC metro area's unemployment rate stood at 3.9 percent in May 2026, below the national rate of 4.4 percent. Northern Virginia had 57,480 residents actively seeking work out of a labor force of 1,671,290, according to the Northern Virginia Regional Commission.

The number of unemployed Northern Virginians ticked up slightly between April and May 2026, from 46,028 to 47,700. Regional inflation also climbed from 3 percent in March to 4.1 percent in May, roughly mirroring national trends, according to the COG dashboard.

What's next

Hunter Mill District Supervisor Walter Alcorn, whose district includes Reston, is scheduled to host a summer town hall on Monday, July 20, in Vienna to discuss major projects and take residents' questions. The Board of Supervisors' next regular meeting is Tuesday, July 22.