By A.J. Kaufman, Managing Editor
President-elect Donald Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency is pushing for an end to remote work across federal agencies, which they believe can reduce the massive federal workforce through attrition. The non-governmental advisory commission is spearheaded by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.
In addition to reducing regulation and slashing government spending, the ambitious priorities include an effort to immediately end remote work across federal agencies and make a standard five-day work week the requirement for all government employees.
In late November, Musk and Ramaswamy published an editorial in the Wall Street Journal that outlined their plans to reform the government and lingering Covid-era work policies.
“Requiring federal employees to come to the office five days a week would result in a wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome,” they wrote in part. “If federal employees don’t want to show up, American taxpayers shouldn’t pay them for the Covid-era privilege of staying home.”
As entrenched bureaucracies resist change, and meaningful reform represents an existential threat to the status quo, the Business Journal feels DOGE will face an uphill battle, even as the country’s national debt surpasses $36 trillion.
But how could this affect our region?
There are nearly 150,000 federal employees in Virginia alone. The share of all Virginians working remotely has tripled since before the pandemic. {Northeast Tennessee has also risen, with the Johnson City metro area encompassing the highest share of remote workers at over 13%, totaling nearly 13,000 people.}
A 2019 report by the Census Bureau put the figure at a paltry 5% of the commonwealth’s workforce. A 2022 report placed the figure at nearly 20%. Many work for Washington, D.C. Closer to home, Southwest Virginia’s 9th District saw federal employment grow from 230 to 1,317 between 2018-22.
Is this exodus from north to south good or bad, and will the new administration’s plans help or hurt our region?
Anything that slows migration from Northern Virginia is probably bad economically for rural and Southwest Virginia. Why? The newcomers from Fairfax and Loudon County make more money than the long-time residents, meaning they’re injected money into local economies.
The median household income in Dickenson County is about $40,000, for example; for Washington County, Va., it sits just shy of $60,000. Any newcomers from Loudoun County average a whopping $170,000 in annual income.
A recent OMB report showed that other than Russell County, every locality in Virginia has seen the number of remote workers increase. And aside from Richmond and Northern Virginia, the biggest percentage increase sat from Montgomery County down to Bristol.
If these recent transplants to Southwest Virginia returned to Northern Virginia, they will be taking their lofty salaries with them.
This is not new or partisan thinking. Covid-19 began nearly five years ago. Changes in many agencies’ return-to-office plans came in response to a 2023 OMB memo, which called on agencies to cut back telework for federal employees while increasing in-person staff.
Currently, not all federal workers are required to be in the office five days a week, as each agency determines its remote policy. There are 1.3 million federal workers approved for telework — about half the civilian workforce — according to recent data from the Office of Personnel Management. Government data shows teleworking federal workers spend only 60% of their time performing their work in person. This seems an aberration to the rest of America’s businesses.
Remote work could cause some government departments to relocate out of Washington, and over time, decentralize the government workforce across the country, making some – Agriculture, Energy, Interior, to name a few — work closer to the majority of those they serve. That is good for America.
Musk, Ramaswamy, and the Trump Administration are understandably concerned about grander things than migration patterns in the Appalachian Highlands, but much like some of Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s tax proposals the Business Journal wrote about last year, it’s possible that Trump’s desire to cut the size of the federal government will have unintended economic consequences for some rural counties that voted overwhelmingly for him (and Youngkin).
The DOGE group, however dedicated, seems in no hurry to conclude their work. The broad plan currently has a self-imposed deadline of summer 2026.
