The number of Fairfax County residents seeking employment is up by a third year-over-year in new state data, as Northern Virginia continues to grapple with the Trump administration’s slashing of federal government jobs.
A total of 23,561 county residents were reported as looking for work in June’s unemployment figures, provided to FFXnow by state officials on Monday (Aug. 4).
That’s up 32% from the 17,882 people seeking jobs in June 2024 data, and up from 21,894 in May 2025, which was already the highest figure in nearly four years.
The county’s non-seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate for June was 3.6%, up from 3.4% a month before and 2.7% a year ago.
June marked the fourth consecutive month that Fairfax saw more than 20,000 residents on the hunt for jobs — numbers that hadn’t been recorded since September 2021, when the nation continued to grapple with Covid.
The 23,561 people seeking jobs in June was the most since July 2021, when 24,539 people were looking for work, according to an FFXnow analysis of state jobs data.
By that time, the local area was rebounding from the pandemic, whose economic impacts had peaked in April 2020 when 62,674 county residents were reported seeking work — equating to a jobless rate of 10.2%
In 2025, the downsizing of the federal government and its ripple effects across the economy that are driving up jobless numbers in the D.C. region.
Even with the one-third increase in those seeking work, Fairfax has been less hard-hit than closer-in Northern Virginia suburbs. In June, the year-over-year increase in jobless residents stood at 50% in Falls Church and 55% in Arlington.
Like Fairfax, both of those jurisdictions are seeing their highest unemployment rates since the economy was still recovering from shutdowns early in the Covid pandemic.
Statewide, the 176,958 people reported as seeking work in June represented an increase of 25% from 141,483 a year before. The statewide unemployment rate stood at 3.9%, up from 3.1% a year before.
All figures are non-seasonally-adjusted.
Using seasonally adjusted figures, state employment officials reported that the number of Virginia residents employed by the federal government declined from 193,300 in June 2024 to 185,500 in June 2025.
Total nonfarm employment in the commonwealth rose by 35,000 jobs year-over-year to 4,268,300, with the bulk of the increase (28,100) coming in the private sector.
Virginia’s labor-force-participation rate decreased by 0.2 percentage points to 65% in June. The participation rate measures the proportion of the civilian population age 16 and older that is employed or actively looking for work.
Though the D.C. region is seeing outsized impacts from the federal job and spending cuts compared to the rest of the country, Fairfax County’s unemployment rate remains below that of the U.S., which reported a 4.2% civilian unemployment rate for July. The national rate has stayed relatively flat over the past year, remaining in the 4% range since May 2024.
In its Aug. 1 report, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics significantly revised earlier jobs numbers, determining that 258,000 fewer people were employed in non-farming jobs for May and June than previously reported. The changes were the result of new data from employers and seasonal adjustments, but President Donald Trump fired the bureau’s commissioner in response to the underwhelming report.
The Virginia Department of Workforce Development and Advancement continues to revamp its Local Area Unemployment Statistics (LAUS) website. While statewide data can be found through June on the site, data for specific localities currently stops at April. It will be updated when the upgrade is complete, state officials told FFXnow.
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