Trump's executive order could affect thousands of federal remote workers in Richmond
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The jobs of thousands of federal remote workers who live in the Richmond area could be at risk after President Trump's executive order calling for an end to remote work for government employees.
Why it matters: On day one, Trump started following through on his promise to overhaul the federal government, which employs tens of thousands in RVA.
The big picture: Mandating a full-time return to in-office work for government employees was among the flurry of executive orders Trump signed on his first day in office.
- As written, the two-sentence order directs agency and department heads to take steps to end remote work arrangements "as soon as practicable" and that they implement it "consistent with applicable law."
- So it's unclear how quickly the order will end remote work or if staffers can be fired for not complying immediately.
- Plus, around 26% of federal workers are unionized and some are covered by agreements that allow remote or hybrid work, Reuters reports. Those agreements would have to expire or be challenged in court to be overruled.
- Still, thousands of federal workers live in Richmond and could be affected by the order, or others centered on reducing the federal government's footprint by firing "rogue bureaucrats and career politicians" and cutting government spending via the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Elon Musk.
Zoom in: Localized data for federal remote workers is limited, plus it has a high margin of error and significant reporting lag time, but stats from the 2023 American Community Survey give some insight, Hamilton Lombard, a demographer with UVA's Weldon Cooper Center, tells Axios.
- That data shows around 2,521 fully remote federal workers lived in Virginia's 4th Congressional District in 2023. The district includes all of the city of Richmond, around half of Henrico and Chesterfield and all the Tri-Cities.
- 3,458 fully remote federal workers lived in the 1st District in 2023, which includes about half of Chesterfield and Henrico, the bulk of Hanover, and runs east through Williamsburg and the Eastern Shore.
- Both those figures are way up from the 439 federal remote workers in the 4th District and 1,783 in the 1st in 2019, though Virginia redrew its Congressional districts in 2021.
Worth noting: There are just over 40,000 federal workers in Richmond as of 2023, which means around 1 in 8 RVA federal workers are fully remote — "a lower share than the overall workforce," Lombard notes.
Stunning stat: "ACS data shows the number of federal workers in Henrico rose by a larger number from 2015 to 2023 than in Arlington and by twice as much in Chesterfield than in Fairfax County during that time period," Lombard tells Axios.
Zoom out: Nationwide, around 228,000 federal workers are fully remote, according to a White House Office of Management and Budget report.
What we're watching: We'll have to wait and see if the executive order results in "in a wave of voluntary terminations," as Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who is stepping aside as DOGE co-lead, wrote last year in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece.