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Fairfax County Sheriff Stacey Kincaid called Board of Supervisors Chairman Jeff McKay to share the news that the public health nurse at the county’s Adult Detention Center was leaving the job.

Kincaid described it as a valuable and hard-to-fill position, McKay said. It’s only vacant now because the husband of the person who held that job was fired from the U.S. Agency for International Development, as part of the sweeping changes handed down to the federal workforce by President Donald Trump’s administration.

Instead of considering alternatives jobs, the couple decided to retire and move to North Carolina, where it’s cheaper to live, McKay said.

For weeks, leaders across the D.C. region have been speaking out about the consequences of government cuts led by the “Department of Government Efficiency,” a Trump administration commission tasked with slashing federal spending.

But now, they’re also spreading awareness about a lesser-considered impact — how many more open jobs there could be if fired federal workers move away and bring their families with them.

“This is a ripple effect that is immeasurable,” McKay said of the public health nurse leaving.

At a Board of Supervisors Economic Initiatives Committee meeting on Tuesday, McKay said when federal workers lose their jobs, there isn’t an easy alternative for them to pursue.

“Many of these people are highly sophisticated, highly educated, highly specialized and highly paid,” McKay said. “And when the principal breadwinner of a home loses their job, it’s a whole lot harder to prevent them from leaving.”

And if that happens, McKay said “secondary wage earners” would likely follow. Those include roles such as teachers, bus drivers, janitors and first responders.

“They’re typically not the main income drivers of a household,” he said. “And if the main person loses their income, you’re going to lose people in Virginia, not just in Northern Virginia, but you’re going to lose people in Virginia.“

That topic came up during a separate meeting Tuesday morning. A General Assembly emergency committee studying the impact from changes to the federal workforce convened in Alexandria to consider consequences of the cuts and how to respond.

Northern Virginia leaders asked state lawmakers for funding for child care subsidies, housing assistance, moratoriums on utility cut offs and help for community organizations, to support government workers who lost their jobs, McKay said.

“I shared with them that we got a lot of help during COVID, but it was from the federal government,” McKay said. “That’s not going to happen this time. Our ability to recover had to do with a lot of infusion of money and support.”

Meanwhile, in Fairfax County, supervisors were briefed on the economic impact of the workforce changes. A new analysis explored impacts of workforce and contractor cuts at 10%, 20% and 30%, according to Stephen Tarditi, director of market intelligence at Fairfax County’s Economic Development Authority.

If 20% of government workers and contractors lost jobs, that would include over 82,000 potential workers in Fairfax County, Tarditi said. The county would lose almost $220 million in tax revenue in that scenario, according to county documents.

There are also impacts, Tarditi said, to how residents spend money or visit doctors.

“These numbers are very somber and sobering,” Supervisor Rodney Lusk said. “It’s pretty significant when you look at the job loss numbers.”

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