As the federal government prepares for large-scale reductions in its workforce, Virginia officials are trying to get a sense of how many people are involved.
How many feds live in Virginia? How you answer the question depends on what you want to know. Terry Clower at George Mason University says many people may live in Virginia but work in D.C. or online.
"Well, what is the count by where people are listed as their duty station," Clower explains. "And of course now we have the added complexity that even with the return to office stuff, there are a portion of federal workers whose jobs are basically remote."
Census numbers show more than 320,000 full-time civilian federal employees live in Virginia. But the number of Virginia residents with jobs that are physically headquartered in Virginia is much lower, says Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments executive director Clark Mercer.
“That number is 190,000 federal jobs are physically located in Virginia," says Mercer. "And those numbers don't always capture all of our intel agencies, for example, typically don't like to report how many people folks work at the CIA or the FBI or Langley or the defense intelligence agencies."
The highest share of federal employees is represented by Congressman Don Beyer of Northern Virginia’s 8th Congressional District, where more than 10% of residents are federal workers.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
