Workforce

Federal offices in D.C. region closed Monday

Federal offices in D.C. closed as winter storm approaches, emergency employees and teleworkers still expected to work

Jared Serbu@jserbuWFED

January 2, 2022 11:12 pm

1 min read

Federal employees in the National Capital Region were told to stay put on Monday morning as a wave of cold winter weather moved across eastern portions of the U.S. and threatened the D.C. area with several inches of snowfall.

The Office of Personnel Management said Sunday evening that federal offices in the Washington D.C. region would be closed Monday. “Emergency” employees — those who know ahead of time that they must work regardless of weather, are still expected to report for duty on Monday.

And the vast swath of the workforce that’s already teleworking because of COVID-19 is still expected work as usual.

OPM announced the closure after the National Weather Service posted a winter storm warning for the area, including Washington, D.C., most of northern Virginia and the suburban Maryland counties around the nation’s capital.

The initial forecast called for up to eight inches of snow by mid-day on Monday. For updated forecasts and other area closures, stay tuned to our colleagues at WTOP and WTOP.com.

Because of the high proportion of the workforce already teleworking because of COVID-19, it’s unclear how many employees will be affected by Monday’s closure.

In its most recent report to Congress, OPM said 45 percent of the total federal workforce was deemed telework-eligible by their agencies in fiscal year 2020, and of those employees, 90 percent actively teleworked. But the office cautioned those relatively outdated figures may not have been an accurate governmentwide snapshot, since agencies were reporting data to OPM at the very same time they were changing telework rules and definitions in response to the pandemic.