New Survey Finds Federal Cuts Have Deeply Reshaped Lives Across the D.C. Region
WASHINGTON — Sam Trumbull once helped write public assistance policy for people who depend on food aid. Then she needed public assistance for her own family. Amanda Nataro, still shaken by the sudden end of her last job, has not taken personal effects to her new office. Nicoletta Barbera and her husband are weighing whether to leave the Washington area, where costs are rising and their salaries are lower than they once were.
They are among thousands of federal workers and contract employees across the Washington region whose lives were upended when the Trump administration and the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency overhauled the federal workforce last year, cutting jobs and grants.
A new survey released Thursday by Gallup and the Greater Washington Community Foundation shows how far those cuts have reverberated in the nation’s capital and surrounding communities.
Despite living in one of the most affluent parts of the country, many residents of greater Washington — which includes parts of Maryland and Virginia and is often called the DMV — now see a bleak local job market and rising costs. Some are considering leaving the region altogether.
“It wasn’t just about our jobs being gone,” Nataro said. “It was really this awful ripple effect of all these lives and destinies really disrupted.”
The District of Columbia has been particularly affected. Official figures show the city accounted for a fifth of the roughly 100,000 job losses in the region, and it has also been host to an ongoing National Guard deployment. According to the survey, about two-thirds of D.C. residents said their household had been directly affected by the job cuts, one of the highest shares in the region.
Affluent households were not spared. A majority — 58% — of those in households earning $90,000 or more a year said they were affected by the reductions, compared with 48% of lower-income households. The finding complicates the image of the Washington area as insulated from economic shocks by its concentration of government and professional jobs.
Trumbull earned more than $130,000 a year at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. After DOGE targeted her job, she accepted a deferred resignation in the second round of offerings, under the threat of a coming USDA reorganization that she did not see as a decent option. She found only part-time employment a year later.
In the meantime, she took a forbearance on her mortgage and applied for public assistance. She and her husband brought home just $2,000 a month, she said, while debt from home ownership mounted.
When full-time jobs did not materialize, she did contract work and taught to “cobble together enough money to make sure my kids were supplied — cause you don’t get to stop buying diapers.”
“I don’t see a future where I can go back to not worrying about moving money around constantly” to cover bills, she said.
Even though lower-income residents were less likely to report being directly affected by the cuts, the survey suggests hardship remained acute among that group. About 14% of DMV residents said they or someone in their household accessed social services such as food banks or job placement support for the first time in the past year. That rose to about one-quarter of those in households earning less than $90,000 a year.
About one-third of DMV residents said they are “very” or “somewhat” worried about paying their rent or mortgage, down from about half in 2023 after the economic troubles of the COVID pandemic. Renters, Black and Hispanic adults, and lower-income residents were especially worried about housing payments.
Nataro, 42, a single mother of two young children, asked her landlord for a rent reduction after she lost her job at USAID, one of DOGE’s first targets. She signed up for food stamps and unemployment assistance. She found work in academia quickly but took a substantial pay cut.
“It’s very humbling, because you know before that you’re paying all your bills and struggling but you’ve got enough to cover everything,” she said. Now she has had to ask for help.
Roughly 2 in 10 DMV residents said there were times in the past year when they could not pay for healthcare, according to the survey. Nataro said she has had to make tough choices about her own healthcare needs to cut costs.
Danielle Yates, managing director of marketing and communications at the Greater Washington Community Foundation, said the survey found that a significant number of people in the region had trouble taking care of basic needs.
About 1 in 10 DMV residents said they could not provide adequate shelter or housing for their family in the past year, according to the survey, and roughly 2 in 10 said there were times when they could not pay for food.
A Capital Area Food Bank survey conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago last year also found broad food insecurity. “Thirty-eight percent of our area’s residents said that they needed some support in putting food on their tables so that they could lead an active and healthy lifestyle,” said Radha Muthiah, executive director of the food bank.
Residents’ views of the local job market are far less optimistic than they were just a few years ago. Only about half of DMV residents rate the availability of good jobs where they live as “excellent” or “good,” down from 65% in 2023.
Those who have found work say they carry the scars of DOGE’s cost-cutting. Nataro said a job she loved and believed made a difference in the world was taken away, leaving her “traumatized.”
“I haven’t taken any real personal effects to the office. We haven’t really unboxed things,” she said.
Rising costs and housing also shape how DMV residents think about the region, beyond the job cuts.
About one-third of DMV residents expect living conditions in the Washington area to be “worse” in the next five years, while about half think they will be “about the same.” Only about 2 in 10 expect things to improve.
About 14% of D.C. residents said they are considering leaving the DMV region in the next year. Most who are thinking about departing pointed to rising costs and housing expenses.
Barbera and her husband both worked at the U.S. Institute of Peace, where staff was fired twice because of court decisions. A year and a half after they were fired in March 2025, the couple are considering leaving the area because of rising costs, especially childcare for their three children. Although both have full-time consulting jobs, they are earning half of what they did, Barbera said.
The two had worked a collective 30 years for the peace-focused organization when they were let go. She said she feels lucky because they have family support and jobs, but they are still being forced to consider a different future.
“This is the only place they’ve lived,” Barbera said of her children. “We don’t want to leave. But we have to have the conversation.”
The VoicesDMV analysis is based on a mail survey of U.S. adults aged 18 and older living in the Greater Washington Region using random address-based sampling. The survey of 2,801 residents was conducted Feb. 9 to April 6, 2026. The margin of sampling error for the full sample is plus or minus 2.6 percentage points.