Since opening in 2022, Herb Banks’ Waldorf-area distillery has served as a gathering spot for federal workers, including four men who used to reconnect over cocktails in the tasting room every Friday evening.

Lately, the group hasn’t stopped in as often. Nor have other regulars. Many in Waldorf, a booming, majority-Black bedroom community in Charles County, are scaling back their spending amid the Trump administration’s aggressive cuts to the federal workforce.

“The revenue has decreased significantly,” Banks said of his business, Copper Compass Distillery.

Charles and Prince George’s counties, Maryland neighbors with intertwined histories, are the nation’s richest majority-Black counties, with median household incomes that exceed $100,000. Nowhere else comes close. Dotted with megachurches, greenery and stately homes, they serve as powerful symbols of Black affluence and opportunity.

Now President Donald Trump’s mass firings of federal workers are shaking the foundation of these suburban D.C. counties’ success: reliable, good-paying government jobs. About 1 in every 5 Black workers here is employed by the federal government, double the statewide average, an analysis by The Baltimore Banner of U.S. Census data shows.

Unlike other communities around the country, federal employment is the main determinant of income status in Maryland’s Black neighborhoods. Here, each 1% jump in workers employed by the federal government adds about $3,300 in median household income, the analysis found.

This robust Black upper-middle class has helped fuel small businesses, restaurants and retailers across Charles and Prince George’s. Now local entrepreneurs fear widespread job losses will ripple across the broader economy.

“We’re just trying to stay operational for as long as we can,” Banks said.

The D.C. suburbs’ Black boom

When President Franklin D. Roosevelt integrated the federal workforce through executive order in 1941, Prince George’s was over 80% white and mostly rural. The order gave Black workers, who had long experienced discrimination in the private sector, a path to better pay and career stability.

During the civil rights era, the Fair Housing Act opened many suburbs to Black families for the first time. By the early 1970s, the first wave of Black families had moved into Prince George’s to claim a piece of suburbia — and, with it, the American dream.

Many who migrated into the county were government workers from D.C. Their children and grandchildren often pursued similar paths, drawn by the calling of public service and the promise of a middle-class life.

One of them was Connie Moore, who grew up in a family of entrepreneurs and government workers. Inspired by their experiences, she left the private sector in 2006, landed at the Department of Transportation and purchased a home with her fiancé in Accokeek, a community of Black professionals. After a promotion, Moore transitioned to the Department of Education.

“This is going to be it for me,” Moore said she thought at the time. “I want to stick with the federal government, get a good career and retire.”

The concentration of federal workers in Prince George’s County allowed it to become a national outlier: a place that grew richer and more educated as it became majority Black. Today, more than 70% of full-time Black workers in the county are homeowners, more than 25% higher than the rate for Black Americans as a whole.

“Most people think of the Black middle class as being primarily a product of business ownership and perhaps attainment of other types of professional occupations, but they don’t think about the role of the federal government as a potential employer,” Duke University economist William A. “Sandy” Darity said.

Federal employment has even been a gateway into the middle class for Black workers without college degrees, who earn median incomes more than $30,000 higher than other Black non-college-educated workers, The Banner’s analysis found.

In recent decades, the population boom in Prince George’s has spilled south into Charles County, bringing an influx of educated Black professionals to rural Southern Maryland. By 2020, Charles had overtaken Prince George’s as the wealthiest majority-Black county in the nation.

In 2018, Denise Joseph moved from Upper Marlboro to Waldorf for the hiking trails, extra space and nearby Black cultural landmarks for her foster children. In her new neighborhood, federal workers lived alongside military service workers and teachers.

For years, Joseph worked for public schools, local universities and county government but aspired to join the federal government. Eventually, she landed a dream job creating policy and leading trainings at the Department of Education.

“I felt like it was a culmination of all the different experiences I had,” Joseph said. “I figured that going there would just be my final stop.”

On Jan. 29, less than two weeks after Trump’s second inauguration, Joseph was nearing the end of her workday when she received an email at 7:58 p.m. At first, it looked like spam. But, after opening an attachment, she learned she was being placed on administrative leave.

Amid sleepless nights and difficulty eating, she said she has spent over two months contacting nearly 100 representatives from Congress and sending dozens of emails to the Office of Personnel Management, hoping to be reinstated.

“This is part of my purpose, my passion,” she said. “I love helping people, and the federal government helped me do that.”

Moore received a reduction-in-force notice in March. Her fiancé is also a government worker. If he loses his job, she said, she is not sure they can afford to remain in Prince George’s County.

“I cannot believe that this is the federal government today,” Moore said.

Federal reductions shake local economies

Janine Horne estimates that 75% of the clients she sees at her health and wellness studio near Waldorf are federal workers.

During recent meditation, yoga and Reiki sessions, the workers have discussed their fears. Some who still have jobs dread checking their email and showing up to workplaces wrought with disgruntlement and fear. Others, laid off after decades in the government, are wondering how to start over.

Horne herself has experienced anxious days. Less than a year after she opened a physical location of Zen Well Studio, her business experienced a sharp downturn.

“My clients were scaling back, and that was a source of worries for me,” Horne said. In recent weeks, however, her business has rebounded. She believes that’s a sign that ongoing stress related to the federal government is driving demand for mental and physical health services.

According to early results of a survey by the Charles County Economic Development Department, 20 businesses have reported being affected by federal policy changes under the Trump administration. Besides losing customers, entrepreneurs said they’ve experienced delays, cancellations or changes to government contracts that support their businesses.

Businesses are also facing an uncertain future in Prince George’s County, where 28 government installations and over 70,000 federal workers fuel the fifth-largest economy in the state. A family-run linen store in Oxon Hill announced it would close this month after federal layoffs contributed to a steep drop in customers and its worst sales month in 37 years.

State Del. Adrian Boafo expressed concern about attracting new business growth, particularly after Trump vowed to block the FBI headquarters’ relocation to the county.

“It doesn’t allow us to become economically viable at a time where we’re trying to make sure that Prince George’s County is open for business,” said Boafo, whose district includes two major hubs of federal workers, Bowie and Upper Marlboro.

At a February meeting of the Board of Charles County Commissioners, local leaders called Trump’s return to the White House a pivotal time in the county’s history. One commissioner warned that widespread job losses could shrink the county’s property and income tax revenue, affecting its ability to fund schools, public safety and infrastructure.

“This could have devastating effects across these communities,” said Darity, the Duke economist. “Increased unemployment has a community-wide effect, even in the households or families where the adult has not been rendered jobless.”

The current climate is already forcing some residents to make hard choices in the housing market. There were nearly 6,000 new listings in the greater D.C. area in March, according to a report from the multiple listing service Bright MLS. Inventory there is rising faster than in the broader mid-Atlantic, the report said.

John Coller, a property manager and owner of Colonial Realty in Waldorf, said one of his tenants moved out of a Bryans Road home after losing a six-figure government job. Another left Waldorf to live with family near D.C. after Trump required remote employees to return to their offices.

“It was a single mom, so her life changes when she has to commute,” Coller said.

Boafo, a first-term delegate, grew up in a community full of federal workers, which he said inspired him to major in government and public policy at the University of Baltimore, work on Capitol Hill and eventually run for office.

He worries that the federal government’s actions will reshape the region and have lasting effects on its future.

“There’s a generation of kids who are seeing this and are looking at federal government work as not dependable,” Boafo said. “And that’s going to be the worst part of all of this.”

Learn more about our analysis and reproduce our findings by visiting our GitHub page.

Baltimore Banner reporter John-John Williams IV contributed reporting.