After decades of rapid expansion, new census figures indicate that growth in the Washington metropolitan area has slowed dramatically in recent years. In Northern Virginia, Fairfax and Arlington counties have watched more people move out than move in over the past year. The same can be said of Alexandria. As reported in the Washington Post, the role of federal spending cuts in slowing job creation is at the heart of the new regional dynamic.
But certain suburbs in the Washington area are getting older, also helping to fuel a new demographic dynamic. Even in the nation’s capital, home to about six hundred and fifty thousand people, net in-migration has slowed sharply. Last year, net in-migration fell to around five thousand people, down from ten thousand people the year prior.
In twenty eleven, the year that the Budget Control Act was passed by Congress, the entire Washington metropolitan area added roughly sixty two thousand new residents including births according to census data. Last year, the number of new residents declined to just eighteen thousand. Not coincidentally, federal spending in the Washington region was eleven billion dollars lower last year than in twenty ten, translating into a fourteen percent decline.
