The Trump administration’s efforts to slash federal spending through mass firings and buyouts of federal workers and cancellation of scores of federal contracts are finally starting to take their toll on Greater Washington’s economy.

New data from the real estate firm CBRE showed that the first of half of 2025 was the second-worst start to the year for Greater Washington’s economy going back to 2009, eclipsed only by the first year of the pandemic.

Notably, the suburbs have been it the hardest, said Ian Anderson, CBRE’s senior director of research and analysis. Northern Virginia has seen the steepest drop in federal employment while federal government contracts and grants procured in suburban Maryland fell more than twice as fast in the first six months of 2025 than other parts of the re

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