WASHINGTON (AP) — Sam Trumbull once wrote public assistance policy to help people receiving food assistance, then needed public assistance for her family. Amanda Nataro won't take personal effects to her new job, after being crushed by the sudden end of her last one. Nicoletta Barbera and her husband are considering leaving the area because of rising costs and lower salaries than they once had.
The women are among the thousands of federal workers and contract
employees in 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 the far-reaching impact on the nation's capital.
Despite living in one of the most affluent parts of the country, many in the greater D.C. area — which includes parts of Maryland and Virginia and is referred to as the DMV — now see a bleak local job market and rising costs. Some are even considering leaving the region.
“It wasn’t just about our jobs being gone. It was really this awful ripple effect of all these lives and destinies really disrupted," Nataro said.
The District of Columbia, which official figures show accounted for a fifth of the roughly 100,000 job losses in the region and is host to an ongoing deployment of the National Guard, has been particularly impacted. 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 percentages in the region.
More affluent households were hit especially hard by the cuts, the survey found. A majority — 58% — of those in households with an annual income of $90,000 or more said they were impacted by the reductions, compared to 48% of lower-income households.
Trumbull earned over $130,000 annually at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. After DOGE came for her job, she took a deferred resignation in the second-round offering, under threat of a forthcoming USDA reorganization that wasn’t really a decent option. She only secured new, part-time employment a year later.
During that time, she had to take a forbearance on her mortgage. She applied for public assistance. She and her husband took home just $2,000 a month, she said, while amassing debt from their home ownership.
When jobs didn’t come through, she did some 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 any impacts, the survey suggests that hardship was still acute among this group. About 1 in 10, 14%, DMV residents say that they or someone in their household accessed social services like food banks or job placement support for the first time in the past year, which rose to about one-quarter of those in households earning less than $90,000 per year.
About one-third of DMV residents say they are “very” or “somewhat” worried about being able to pay their rent or mortgage, down from about half in 2023 following the economic troubles of the COVID pandemic. Renters, Black and Hispanic adults, and lower-income residents are particularly worried about housing payments.
Nataro, 42, and a single mom 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 say there were times in the past year when they couldn't pay for healthcare, according to the survey. Nataro said she has had to make tough choices on her personal healthcare needs to cut costs.
Danielle Yates, the 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 their basic needs.
About 1 in 10 DMV residents say they couldn't provide adequate shelter or housing for their family the past year, according to the survey, and roughly 2 in 10 say there were times when they couldn't 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 CAFB.
Residents' perceptions of the local job market are much less optimistic than 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've been left with the scars of DOGE's ruthlessness.
A job Nataro loved and felt 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.”
Rising costs and housing also influence how DMV residents think about the region, in addition to the job cuts.
About one-third of DMV residents expect that living conditions in the Washington area will be “worse” in the next five years, while about half think they will be “about the same.” Only about 2 in 10 expect things will get better.
About 1 in 10 D.C. residents, 14%, say they are considering leaving the DMV region in the next year, with most who are thinking about departing pointing to rising costs and housing expenses.
Barbera and her husband both worked at the U.S. Institute of Peace, a place where the 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 jobs doing consulting work, they are earning half of what they did, said Barbera.
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 are being forced into considering 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.”
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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.
