On February 7, 2025, Executive Director Yesim Sayin was quoted in Politico:
“My daughter is a high school senior, and like other high school seniors, when she’s home, she’s spending her entire time FaceTiming her friends,” said Yesim Sayin, the executive director of the D.C. Policy Center, a think tank focused on local Washington and funded by local businesses. “There are two topics of conversation. One is, ‘Which school did you hear from?’ The other is, ‘Do your parents still have a job?’ It is really tough to hear it. The anxiety, it permeates.”
I’d called Sayin, who crunches numbers on the city economy, to ask a big picture question about the state of play: Was this, indeed, like being in Michigan as the auto industry imploded?
Sayin’s short answer was that, statistically, it’s too soon to tell. The so-called deferred resignation deal that’s been offered to federal workers won’t even show up in economic data until September. It’ll take even longer to be reflected in home sales. It’s a big, complex economy.
“It is a very difficult time in D.C.,” Sayin said. “The uncertainties are so big. There’s a whole industry contingent on the federal government spending money.”
“It’s essentially like a nuclear bomb falls and destroys all your future plans,” Sayin said, describing the effect of a firing on people who assumed they would be career-long feds.
Read More: ‘Are We Detroit Now?’: Trump’s Cuts Panic Washington
Additional reading: Chart of the week: While the District’s population grew for the third consecutive year, two key indicators remain concerning.