Laid off from ICF.

What ICF layoffs have meant for employees

Most of the termination and stop-work notices ICF received in the first weeks of 2025 were on USAID contracts. By February 25 it held termination-for-convenience notices covering about $276 million of work and stop-work orders covering about $99 million more, ICF's 10-K for 2024 says, and it didn't yet know whether the stop-work orders would be lifted or turn into terminations. If your project was under one of those stop-work orders, ICF didn't know its fate either. Over the year, the termination notices came primarily in the first and second quarters, according to the company's 2025 Form 10-K, which also says its federal customers didn't reimburse the termination benefits that resulted, so ICF bore those costs itself. That filing counts those exits as a direct result of the terminations, which is ICF's own word on why those jobs ended.

Both Rockville notices are dated after the effective dates listed for them, by eight and twelve days, in Maryland's 2025 WARN log. No reason for either appears in the log, so it doesn't by itself link them to the terminations ICF was taking in at that point. For anyone on those two notices, the no-recall type the log gives both is a sign the jobs weren't expected back.

ICF staff at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency have lost work to DHS contracting before. In July 2025 the agency's Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative, which had a small federal staff and leaned heavily on contractors, went from more than 100 ICF contractors to 10 after its contract with ICF expired on July 25 without a timely renewal, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke to Cybersecurity Dive. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem's rule that her office approve virtually all of the department's contracts was behind that lapse and others, the outlet reported, and CISA could keep the remaining 10 on emergency funding two weeks at a time while it waited on approval of a one-year extension. Neither that story nor the 2026 reports by Virginia Business and Patch say whether the collaborative's contract and the one DHS chose to consolidate are the same.

The jobs on the Arlington notice run from cybersecurity and program management to writing, web development, physical security and emergency management, Virginia Business reported, and Patch put most of them in cybersecurity or project management. A Rapid Response project for federal employees and contractors in Northern Virginia got state funding in November 2025, to be run by Virginia Career Works Northern Region with one-on-one case management, training in fields including IT, cybersecurity and project management, and job search help, according to Virginia Works' November 2025 release. The release also listed free LinkedIn Learning licenses and help with transportation and professional attire, and planned a business engagement manager to connect displaced workers with regional employers and to coordinate hiring events and job fairs. That announced training list overlapped with most of the work on the Arlington notice. The release pointed displaced workers to their local Virginia Career Works center and said the Northern Region worked closely with its counterparts in Arlington County and Alexandria.

Who made the call differs from one ICF layoff to the next. The 2025 terminations and the 2026 consolidation decision were federal choices about contracts ICF held, while the 2023 wind-down of its non-core British and Belgian marketing businesses was ICF's own, and the company paid retention as well as severance to see that one through.

If you worked for ICF in Virginia or Maryland, our pages on Virginia and Maryland unemployment benefits are a place to start on a claim.