Fairfax County's labor force fell to 628,260 in August, its smallest count since April 2022.

The figure, first reported by FFXnow from Virginia Department of Workforce Development and Advancement (DWDA) data released Sept. 30, counts everyone employed or actively looking for work. Of the 628,260, about 607,418 held jobs and 20,842 were searching, putting the county's unemployment rate at 3.3%.

All August figures are preliminary.

That 3.3% rate is a tick below the 3.4% recorded a year earlier. But the dip masks a weaker labor market, according to Keith Waters, assistant director of the Center for Regional Analysis at George Mason University. When people stop looking for work or leave the region, they drop out of the count, pulling the unemployment rate down even as the job market softens.

"I'm not sure I would go as far as [to say] it's on track to keep lowering," Waters told the Fairfax County Times on Sept. 25. He noted the county's unemployment rate jumped from 2.4% at the end of 2024 to 3.8% in 2025, partly because of federal workforce reductions, before easing to 3.4% ahead of the latest reading.

The shrinking workforce is part of a broader regional pattern. The D.C. metro area led the nation in year-over-year employment loss in August, shedding 66,000 jobs, a 2% decline, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) nonfarm payroll data released Sept. 30. Neighboring Arlington County also hit its lowest workforce total in more than four years.

Statewide, Virginia's civilian labor force shrank by nearly 68,000 people between early 2025 and June 2026, a 1.5% drop, according to a quarterly forecast from the University of Virginia's Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service released Sept. 2. João Ferreira, acting director of the Center for Economic and Policy Studies at the Weldon Cooper Center, said in a press release quoted by FFXnow that the decline pointed to greater underlying weakness than the unemployment rate alone would suggest. The center projected Virginia would lose an estimated 18,050 jobs in 2026, making it the second straight year of contraction.

For McLean-area residents, the squeeze has two sides. Federal job cuts have hit the county hard: a Gallup/Greater Washington Community Foundation survey conducted Feb. 9 through April 6 found that 49% of respondents in Fairfax County and the cities of Fairfax and Falls Church said cuts or furloughs hurt their household, as reported by FFXnow. In the same survey, 59% cited rising cost of living as a reason they would consider leaving the region.

Housing costs are a key driver of that out-migration. A January 2025 Northern Virginia Regional Commission report found the region has experienced consistent net domestic out-migration since 2018, with young adults ages 18 to 44 on low and middle incomes leading the departures. Bottom-tier home values in Fairfax County stood at $490,191 as of September 2024, according to the report's Zillow-sourced data. That report predates the federal cuts that began in 2025.

Before May 2025, Fairfax County's jobless rate had stayed below 3% for 44 of 45 consecutive months, bottoming out at 1.8% in November 2021. It has been at or above 3% for 15 months since, excluding October 2025, when data was not reported during the federal government shutdown.

No Fairfax County officials have publicly commented on the August workforce figures. The next monthly state labor data release covers September 2026.