A government shutdown may worsen conditions for the already struggling economy of the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, hammering a region that has been affected by dramatic federal job losses under the Trump administration.

With congressional leaders unable to reach an agreement on federal funding levels and health care policy changes, the government shut down at 12:01 a.m. on Wednesday, with no clear resolution to the impasse or indication of how long it will last. Shutdowns typically involve hundreds of thousands of federal employees being furloughed or working without pay. Meanwhile, the Office of Management and Budget released a memo last week instructing agencies to prepare for mass firings in an as yet unsuccessful effort to pressure congressional Democrats to vote to keep the government open.

There will be gallons of ink spilled over the next days and weeks about which political faction is “winning” the shutdown. While that transpires, the cessation will exacerbate preexisting economic struggles in the region. Although federal workers reside throughout the United States, a large percentage of employees are concentrated in the Washington metropolitan area. Locals call this region the DMV, referring to the intertwined economies of D.C., Maryland and Virginia. The DMV is home to 6.4 million people, and the region is the sixth-largest economy in the country.

Since Trump took office a second time, the DMV region has been particularly hard hit by his efforts to shrink the federal workforce. According to a July report by the Richmond Federal Reserve,........

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