The start of REAL ID enforcement in early May went without major hassle at Northern Virginia’s two airports.
“The rollout was smooth and uneventful,” Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA) Executive Vice President and Chief Operations Officer Thomas Beatty said at the authority’s May 21 board of directors meeting.
A key indicator suggests Fairfax County’s housing market is not yet feeling the full effects of the region’s economic uncertainty, but both data and expert opinion suggest the market could be in for a bumpy ride in coming months.
The average per-square-foot sales price of homes that sold across the county in April was $375, up 1.9% from $368 a year before, according to figures reported last Monday (May 12) by MarketStats by Showing Time for Bright MLS, the D.C. region’s multiple-listing service.
Fairfax County arts organizations have not been immune from the Trump administration’s efforts to downsize the federal government.
Both the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) have started rescinding funding awards from projects and organizations they say don’t fit the priorities of President Donald Trump.
The ranks of unemployed Fairfax County residents ticked up nearly 8% month-over-month and 37% year-over-year in March, according to new state data, as Northern Virginia’s economy takes a hit from the federal government’s downsizing and collateral economic impacts.
A total of 20,836 Fairfax residents were counted as unemployed for March, according to figures reported this week by the Virginia Employment Commission. That compares to 19,315 in February and 15,171 in March 2024.
A survey of Northern Virginia business leaders found high levels of uncertainty after months of turmoil from tariff policies and federal job cuts.
The Northern Virginia Chamber of Commerce (NVC) and communications agency Pinkston released a Q2 Business Leader Survey yesterday (Tuesday) that collected feedback from business organizations in Fairfax, Falls Church, Reston and other locations around Northern Virginia.
The Fairfax real-estate market had a solid start to 2025. Where Fairfax and the broader Northern Virginia region goes from there, however, is an open question.
“It is still too soon to tell whether the spring housing market will blossom or stay dormant a little longer,” said Lisa Sturtevant, chief economist for Bright MLS, in parsing March’s housing data.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) continues to throw his support behind federal job cuts and heightened tariffs, despite many Virginia officials’ and economists’ warnings of economic fallout.
In a CNBC interview yesterday (Monday), Youngkin acknowledged the pain that President Donald Trump’s economic decisions have already caused many Virginia residents. However, he argued that the layoffs are in the United States’ long-term interests and argued that tariffs will accelerate investments across the United States, including in Virginia.
The number of Fairfax County residents counted as unemployed and looking for work in February spiked 17% from the same month in 2024 in new data.
The city and county-level unemployment figures released by the Virginia Employment Commission last Thursday (April 10) kickstarted what could be a series of punishing monthly jobless reports in coming months, as the D.C. region begins to adjust to the ripple effects of the Trump administration gutting the federal government and tariff-related uncertainty.
Organizers of the WorldPride 2025 celebration coming to the D.C. region on May 31 through June 8 are reevaluating their attendance expectations, especially among international participants.
Event organizers have anticipated upwards of 2 million visitors for the LGBTQ community celebration, but with foreign travel to the U.S. plunging amid reports of visitors being detained and the Trump administration barring changes to the gender marker on passports, they may not meet that figure — another potential setback for an economy already facing multiple headwinds.
Even without taking into account the global economic havoc being wreaked by new tariffs, the Trump administration’s gutting of the federal workforce could have worse impacts on the D.C. region than Covid, Fairfax County authorities say.
A 20% reduction in the federal workforce could devastate the economy in Fairfax County, where approximately 80,000 residents — about 13% of the workforce — are employed by the federal government, according to updated data from the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority (FCEDA).
