Workers are headed back to the office somewhat more frequently than last year in Fairfax County and the post-pandemic rate of remote work appears to be leveling off, a county economic-development official informed the Board of Supervisors July 23.
Workers in the county made 63.7 percent fewer office visits in June 2021 than they did pre-pandemic. But that figure dropped to minus-44.5 percent in June 2022 and minus-33 percent rate in June 2023, then fell to minus-29.4 percent this June.
Nationwide, the most recent year-over-year figures show remote-work job listings to have been halved to 3.25 percent, said Stephen Tarditi, marketing-intelligence director for the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority (FCEDA).
Speaking at the Board of Supervisors’ Economic Initiatives Committee meeting, Tarditi brought other economic good news.
The county is seeing steady growth in its employment numbers, he said, citing May 2024 figures showing a workforce of nearly 646,000 people, an unemployment rate of just 2.3 percent and more than 47,000 jobs waiting to be filled.
“The job opportunities are robust here in the county,” he said. “We have a similar number of job postings as many of our peer counties that are of similar size and population.”
Fairfax County had about 38,500 employer establishments in the first quarter of this year. In 2023, the county saw 106 deals that brought in $1.6 billion worth of capital investment.
FCEDA is “seeing a strong capital attraction” to the county at a time when venture-capital dollars are going down across the country, Tarditi said. Key industries for those moneys include defense, technology and artificial intelligence, particularly with regard to healthcare, he said.
A CNBC report recently pegged Virginia as the best state for business and Fairfax County accounts for 20 percent of the commonwealth’s gross domestic product, Tarditi said.
The county does not “boom in the same way that some of the headline-grabbing markets do,” but neither does it go bust when economic hard times arrive, he said.