Fairfax County’s unemployment total remains nearly 28% higher than before the second Trump administration began, according to new state data.
With 603,031 county residents employed in the civilian workforce and 21,426 looking for jobs, Fairfax’s unemployment rate was 3.4% in September, according to figures reported Oct. 28 by the Virginia Department of Workforce Development and Advancement.
The jobless rate changed little from the 3.3% of one year earlier, but it was up significantly from 2.6% in September 2024 during the waning days of the Biden administration.
The Trump administration’s downsizing of the federal workforce beginning in early 2025 and its related impacts on the regional economy resulted in a 27.8% increase in the number of county residents counted as unemployed from September 2024, according to an FFXnow analysis of state data.
The bump up in joblessness since 2024 has been accompanied by a decline in Fairfax County’s total workforce, both employed and unemployed. It dropped from 645,350 in September 2024 to 624,457 in September 2026, a dip of 3.3%.
Across the local region, some residents have left the workforce, moved to irregular jobs or moved out of the area entirely.
A similar picture was found in the City of Fairfax, where the September unemployment rate of 3.2% was up slightly from a year before due to four more people counting as unemployed. However, the rate is notably higher than the 2.4% of September 2024, even as the workforce total has declined.
This September, a total of 13,712 city residents had jobs in the civilian workforce, with 444 seeking jobs.
Across Northern Virginia as a whole, September’s jobless rate of 3.4% was up from 3% a year ago, representing just under 1.65 million people in the civilian workforce and about 57,800 seeking jobs.
Statewide, September’s jobless rate of 3.6% was up from 3.4% a year ago, with about 4.28 million with jobs and just over 162,000 seeking them.
The Washington region was one of 226 metro areas across the nation to report lower year-over-year jobless rates in September, according to data also reported on Oct. 28 by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Rates were higher in 138 metro areas and unchanged in 23.
The national unemployment rate in September was 4%, little changed from a year before, federal officials said.
Across the D.C. metro area, about 3.44 million people were employed in September with about 126,000 seeking jobs. The resulting unemployment rate of 3.7% declined from 4.1% in 2025.
While the region’s number of unemployed was down from a year before, so was the number of those employed.
In terms of total nonfarm employment, the D.C. region saw the sharpest decline in raw numbers this September year-over-year, with the region losing 61,000 jobs or 1.8% of its total workforce.
That’s more than 15 times the next largest drop, a total of 3,800 recorded in Bloomington, Indiana. But because Bloomington’s population is much smaller, its percentage drop of 4.7% was significantly larger than the D.C. region’s.
Figures are non seasonally adjusted. All September 2026 figures are preliminary and are subject to revision.
