Number Of Unemployed Increases By A Third Alexandria, Fairfax County: Reports

ALEXANDRIA, VA — Alexandria and Fairfax County saw major jumps in unemployment figures to start 2026, ALX Now and FFX Now report. Experts said the jump was due in large part to sweeping cuts in the federal workforce a year ago.

Citing data released by the Virginia Department of Workforce Development and Advancement, Alexandria saw an increase in the number of unemployed people of 33.9 percent in January 2026 from a year earlier. In Fairfax County, the increase was 33.8 percent.

Subscribe

Some 3,656 Alexandria residents were looking for work in January of this year, along with 23,749 Fairfax County residents. Alexandria’s overall unemployment rate increased from 2.7 percent in January 2025 to 3.7 percent in January 2026.

In Fairfax County the rate grew from 2.7 percent to 3.8 percent.

The Northern Virginia Regional Commission reports that unemployment across the region grew from 2.7 percent to 3.7 percent year on year.

Jill Kaneff, senior regional demographer and data analyst for the NVRC, told Patch that percentage point shift is largely due to sweeping federal layoffs instituted by the Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE, as well as budget cuts affecting contractors and grantees.

"Much of the impact was in the professional services sector as well as the federal sector," she said.

According to an analysis published by the commission on April 16, "the Northern Virginia portion of the D.C. Metro Area lost 17,000 federal jobs, a 17.9 percent decline, outpacing the D.C. Metro Area's 16.5 percent drop and well above the national federal employment loss of 11.1 percent. Northern Virginia accounted for about 1 in every 20 federal workforce cuts nationwide, while the D.C. Metro Area accounted for about 1 in every 5, underscoring how concentrated the impact has been in Northern Virginia and the greater D.C. region."

In 2023, in much of Northern Virginia, the federal government's share of total employment was 10 percent or higher, according to the Northern Virginia Regional Commission and more than 175,000 residents of Northern Virginia were employed by the federal government.

OpenFeds reports that the state of Virginia lost a total of 59,300 jobs in the 2025 federal downsizing program undertaken by DOGE.

Terry Clower, professor of public policy in the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University and director of the university's Center for Regional Analysis, told Patch the most recent figures probably still don't capture the full picture.

The unemployment figures aren't actually as bad as they could be "due to the nature of the federal separations. Most of the federal job separations were fork in the road choices," he said, in which employees were offered the opportunity to quit or retire by a certain date.

"A lot of those folks might not have jobs but don't necessarily qualify for unemployment because they quit," at least technically, Clower said.

Workers who aren't eligible for unemployment won't be reflected in figures that rely on unemployment insurance applications. And people who took early retirement and aren't necessarily seeking jobs but who might in the future, or who might have otherwise remained employed, are likewise obscured.

So while unemployment rates might have ticked up by a percentage point in the region, "what we are seeing is a pretty sharp drop-off in labor force participation rates," Clower said.

Kaneff pointed out that many of those laid off due to federal cuts and their ripple effects have very specialized skills, and they have struggled to find jobs at that skill level and pay level.

Clower also reported that job advertisement numbers have dropped significantly and warned that if Northern Virginia can't generate jobs for those who are looking, the region and state risks a brain drain.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on April 16 that unemployment rates were higher in January than a year earlier in 252 of the 387 metropolitan areas it covers. The national unemployment rate in January was 4.7 percent, not seasonally adjusted, up from 4.4 percent a year earlier.

Read more here and here.