More than 6 million people live in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, but only about 700,000 live in the actual District of Columbia. The rest live in the suburbs, Maryland, and Northern Virginia.
Thanks to a federal government that spends $6 trillion per year — more than one-fifth of the entire economy — these suburbs are doing very well. Five of the seven wealthiest counties in the United States, it is often noted, are within commuting distance of downtown Washington, D.C.
However, in recent years, “commuting distance” has become a less apt term, considering how many federal employees never come to work.
Only about half of all federal employees are required to work on-site full-time, the Office of Management and Budget reported last summer — that’s about a million employees. OMB found that about 228,000 are fully “remote,” meaning there is no expectation that they report to the office. The partly-remote workers average about 3 days in the office and two days at home.
This legacy of the pandemic isn’t going to end anytime soon. For instance, President Joe Biden’s Social Security Administration just cut a deal with its labor union that would extend teleworking into 2029.
Biden’s successor doesn’t like this.
“If people don’t come back to work, come back into the office, they’re going to be dismissed,” President-elect Donald Trump declared after the election.
Trump’s buddies Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, set on finding massive government savings, are also enemies of work-from-home.
“Requiring federal employees to come to the office five days a week would result in a wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome,” the pair wrote in an op-ed.
The well-funded governments of the wealthy surrounding counties see an opportunity here.
Arlington County, basically the former part of Washington, D.C., retroceded to Virginia, has offered jobs to federal employees who refuse to go back to work.
“I’m expecting we’re going to have a pile of really qualified applicants knocking on our door — in every department,” said Arlington County Manager Mark Schwartz.
It’s not merely that Virginians wouldn’t have to cross the Potomac River to get to work in Arlington. Schwartz is also making it clear they wouldn’t have to get out of their pajamas.
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This isn’t a new play. During the 2019 government shutdown, neighboring Fairfax County told furloughed federal workers to apply to be substitute teachers. It was part opportunism and part expression of class solidarity.
“It’s a small gesture of appreciation that Fairfax County Public Schools can share with our displaced federal workers,” Scott Braband, Fairfax County Public Schools superintendent, phrased it.
These county governments have become something extraordinary: powerful public entities that exist largely to represent the interests of public employees. For now, that interest is to avoid Washington, D.C.’s, dreadful commute.