38.8783° N, 77.1007° W Arlington County, Virginia Population 244,300

Welcome to Arlington HQ

Arlington's top fifth of households averages $472,842 a year and takes just under half of all income earned in the county. That money buys the fittest city in America nine years running, the most expensive public schools in Northern Virginia, and a 26-minute average commute to the agencies and contractors that pay for it.

Start with the work
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00 — Six Domains

Lifestyle of Affluence

The top fifth of Arlington households takes just under half of all income earned in the county. This is what that fifth is buying — across the six domains a planner would use to describe any place.

Nearly a third of Arlington households clear $200,000, which makes $200,000 the sixty-seventh percentile here rather than a marker of anything. The top fifth averages $472,842; the top twentieth averages $820,068.

01 — The Work

What the work pays

Two federal salaries, or one federal and one contractor, clear the top quintile without either partner running a company.

177,396Covered workers in Arlington County, third quarter 2024. Unemployment was 2.3 percent that November.
$105,090Mean annual wage across the Alexandria–Arlington workforce area — the highest of Virginia's fourteen.
77.1%Of residents 25 and over hold a bachelor's degree or higher. The national figure is around a third.
26.2 minMean travel time to work. Thirty-five percent of residents work from home.

What the roles pay

OccupationAnnual median
Computer and information systems managers$195,190
Software developers$154,930
Information security analysts$148,950
Data scientists$132,200

Washington–Arlington–Alexandria metropolitan area, not the county alone. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. These are medians, not means — half of each group earns more.

Who employs the county

Defense, schools, consulting, airlines.

  • U.S. Department of DefenseLargest employer in the county. The Pentagon carries a Washington mailing address and stands in Arlington, its western property line against Arlington National Cemetery.
  • Arlington County School BoardSecond largest. Nearly 8,000 employees, about 3,000 of them teachers.
  • Accenture · Deloitte · Booz Allen HamiltonConsulting and federal services, all inside the top ten.
  • United and American AirlinesBoth rank in the top ten, a consequence of National Airport sitting on the county's edge.

Virginia Works publishes the ranking without headcounts, third quarter 2024. Deloitte appears four times as separate legal entities.

The Department of Defense is a neighbour

  • The Pentagon6,636,360 square feet of floor space and 17.5 miles of corridor on a 245-acre reservation in Arlington County, bounded on the west by Arlington National Cemetery. The Department publishes 25,000-plus office occupants; the planning commission counted more than 26,560 people traveling to and from the site each day.
  • Joint Base Myer-Henderson HallTwo miles from the District, adjoining Arlington National Cemetery. Home to the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment — the Old Guard — and the U.S. Army Band. It served about 5,545 active duty and 2,703 civilians as of March 2026.
  • Research, three blocks of itDARPA at 675 North Randolph Street, the Office of Naval Research at 875, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency on 12th Street South. The agencies that set and fund the national research agenda are walking distance from each other.
  • More than 25,000 federal employeesWork in Arlington, on the county's own count. The Department of Defense is the single largest employer here.

What is on the other side

  • Key Bridge lands in GeorgetownThe Park Service's own description: the bridge connects Georgetown on the Washington side to Rosslyn on the Virginia side. Eleven of the Metro system's 86 stations are in Arlington, on four lines.
  • Foggy Bottom is the far bankThe Federal Reserve describes its own neighborhood as the riverfront stretch east of Georgetown — the Kennedy Center, George Washington University, the Watergate, the State Department and the Federal Reserve Board. Interior sits a few blocks in, on C Street.
  • 125,231 in, 92,784 outArlington imports workers: that many commute in daily, against that many residents commuting out. The largest single outbound destination is the District, at 38,582.
  • Reagan National is here2401 Smith Boulevard, an Arlington address, under exclusive federal jurisdiction. It handled just under 24.9 million passengers in 2025.
  • The highest wages in VirginiaArlington's average weekly wage was $2,627 in the first quarter of 2025 — the highest of any county in the Commonwealth.

Where it actually ranks

  • First: fittest city in AmericaThe American College of Sports Medicine has put Arlington first among the hundred largest U.S. cities every year since 2018, on 35 indicators across personal health, infrastructure and environment. It ranks Census places; Arlington's is coterminous with the county.
  • First: the most livable large communityAARP's Livability Index put Arlington first among communities of 100,000 to 499,999 for a second consecutive year, across 61 indicators drawn from more than 50 data sources.
  • Second: digital countyArlington placed second nationally in the 2026 Digital Counties Survey for its population band, on the strength of consolidating eighteen call centers and standing up countywide AI governance.
  • Twelfth: economic performanceThe Arlington–Alexandria–Reston metropolitan division in the Milken Institute's 2026 index — a region, not the county. Computer and mathematical work is 7.4 percent of metro employment against 3.4 nationally.

The thing that changed

Among federal employees, telework fell from 79 percent to 23 between 2022 and 2025 — the sharpest drop of any sector. For a household that bought here to be close to the desk, that is the year the purchase paid for itself.

Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, 2025 State of the Commute. Hybrid workers now average 2.3 teleworking days a week, down from 3.4 in 2022.

02 — The Infrastructure

What the technology actually changed

What the tax rate buys back: a short commute, a fast network, and a county that builds.

The trains drive themselves again

  • Full system automation, June 2025Automatic Train Operation returned to the Blue, Orange and Silver lines on 15 June 2025, completing the rollout begun on the Red Line in December 2024. It is the first time the whole system has run in ATO since 2009.
  • 524,600 weekday ridesAverage daily Metrorail ridership in May 2026, up 4 percent on weekdays year over year. The system carried 264 million trips in FY2025.
  • Eleven stations in the countyOn four lines. A second entrance at Crystal City, $146.1 million, broke ground in July 2024 and is expected in 2027.
  • New railcars are comingWMATA has 256 8000-series cars on order with options to 800 — open gangways, 28 onboard displays, 5G and Wi-Fi throughout. The pilot car is expected in 2027.

The county runs on its own network

  • Second in the countryArlington placed second in the Center for Digital Government's 2026 Digital Counties Survey for its population band, published in July 2026.
  • Eighteen call centers into oneConsolidated onto a single cloud platform, alongside a countywide AI governance process for evaluating tools and managing security risk.
  • ConnectArlingtonA county-owned fibre-optic network linking County and Schools buildings along the main commercial corridors, with links to Equinix and Internet2.
  • Open by defaultThe county publishes its GIS as open data — the building heights, park polygons and station points behind the map further down this page came from it.

The buildings have targets

  • Carbon neutral by 2050And 100 percent renewable electricity community-wide by 2035. County government operations hit 100 percent renewable in 2025, ahead of schedule.
  • LEED Gold to build tallSince 2020 the Green Building Incentive Policy has set LEED Gold as the floor for bonus density, with higher tiers for Passive House and net-zero.
  • 51 charging portsInstalled by the county at nine sites, Central Library the largest at twelve. $0.1746 per kilowatt-hour since January 2025.
  • Electric buses on the roadART put its first battery-electric buses into service in 2025 and ran them 74,000 miles, from a new operations facility carrying 817 solar panels and charging capacity for up to 61 of them.

03 — Saturday

Arlington Vibes

Eleven farmers markets in the county. This one runs Saturdays 8am–12pm, year-round, at N. Courthouse Road and N. 14th Street.

What the weekend looks like

04 — Fitness

Why it keeps winning

Nine straight years first in America. Not because of a program, but because a 50-metre public pool, a sixteen-mile separated loop and a 113,000-square-foot club all sit inside the county line.

9 yrsConsecutive years at number one on the ACSM American Fitness Index, 2018 through the 2026 edition. Washington is second, then Minneapolis, Seattle and Denver.
87.8%Of adults had exercised in the previous month — the highest of the hundred cities measured. The smoking rate, 3.4 percent, was the lowest.
76.4%Sleep seven hours or more a night, also first in the country. Sleep is one of the twenty personal-health indicators the index scores.
98.9%Live within a ten-minute walk of a park. Arlington's park access score is 99 out of 100.

What the index measures

  • Thirty-five indicators, in two halvesTwenty for personal health — exercise, diet, sleep, smoking, obesity, blood pressure, self-reported health. Fifteen for the community around it — parks, playgrounds, pools, courts, air quality, walk and bike scores, park spending.
  • Arlington is first on the personal halfAnd third on the community half in the 2026 edition. Washington is the mirror image: first on community, third on personal.
  • Two of the indicators are commutingThe share who walk or bike to work, and the share who take transit, both drawn from the Census. They are scored as health behaviours, not transport statistics.
  • It has been climbingIn 2018, its first year at the top, Arlington ranked fourth on personal health and fifth on community, at a score of 77.7 out of 100.

What is on the ground

  • 197 parks, 129 playgroundsPlus 420 basketball hoops, 108 ball diamonds, 15 recreation centers, 10 dog parks and 7 splashpads. Arlington scores a perfect 100 on hoops, dog parks, playgrounds and splashpads.
  • $303 per resident, per yearPark spending, scoring 97 out of 100 against an acreage score of 37. The county buys density and upkeep rather than size.
  • Sixteen miles of separated loopThe Arlington Loop joins the Custis, W&OD, Four Mile Run and Mount Vernon trails into a circuit with almost no road crossings. Most residents live within a mile of it.
  • 111 bikeshare docksCapital Bikeshare stations inside the county, on a regional network of more than 700.

What the people who rank it say

  • “Where you live increasingly determines how healthy you are.”Stella Volpe, chair of the Fitness Index advisory board and a past president of the American College of Sports Medicine.
  • Systems, not programs“The cities that consistently rank at the top aren't succeeding because of one program or one investment. They've built systems that support healthier living over time.”
  • The word she uses is accessibilityThe healthiest cities, she says, “make movement part of daily life through infrastructure, transportation and community design.”
  • Air quality counts too84.4 percent of days rated good for air quality — sixth best of the hundred cities.

The trails, actual mileage

TrailLengthRuns
W&OD45 miShirlington to Purcellville. NOVA Parks.
Mount Vernon18 miRoosevelt Island to Mount Vernon. National Park Service.
Arlington Loop16 miCustis, W&OD, Four Mile Run and Mount Vernon joined into a circuit, separated from cars but for a few intersections. Most residents live within a mile of it.
Four Mile Run9.72 miContinues into Alexandria.
Custis5.12 miRosslyn to the W&OD, mostly alongside I-66.

County figures for Custis and Four Mile Run; NPS and NOVA Parks for the others. Four county sources give four different totals for paved trail mileage, from 49 to 80 — the higher ones count trail outside the county line.

Indoors, and what it costs

Long Bridge Aquatics & Fitness Center

  • 92,000 square feet, opened 2021A 50-metre competition pool with one, three and five-metre towers, a leisure pool, lazy river and an 8,000 square foot fitness center. It cost $60 million.
  • $745 a year, resident adultFamily membership $2,060; youth $415; a day pass is $11. Non-residents pay about thirty percent more. FY2026 rates.
  • Ten community centersPlus two fitness centers and two nature centers. The indoor pools are run by the school system, not the county.
  • A boathouse, eventuallyThe county is master-planning a Potomac rowing and paddling facility near Roosevelt Island at $20–30 million, expected by the end of the decade.

A $34.9 million parks bond goes to voters on 3 November 2026, part of a $184.3 million package inside the county's ten-year capital plan.

The racing calendar

The two big ones both start at the Pentagon

  • Marine Corps Marathon25 October 2026. Runners assemble in the north Pentagon lot and finish at the Marine Corps War Memorial — start and finish both in Arlington. Run by the Marines, it is the third-largest marathon in the United States and the largest anywhere that offers no prize money, which is how it got the name the People's Marathon.
  • Army Ten-Miler11 October 2026, its forty-second running, starting at the Pentagon and crossing into Washington and back. Organised by the Army for its morale, welfare and recreation programs, and running since 1985.

And a race most months

  • Crystal City 5K FridaysA weekly evening series through April on Crystal Drive, followed by the Twilighter 5K in July.
  • Clarendon Day RunSeptember, past Arlington National Cemetery, run by Pacers.
  • Arlington Turkey TrotThanksgiving morning at Lyon Park, eight o'clock, for six local charities.
  • Four Courts Four MilerMarch, through Courthouse and past the cemetery, put on by the police department's Friends and Family.

Where people train

  • Pacers Running, Clarendon3100 Clarendon Boulevard. Free group runs Tuesday nights on the Washington-Liberty track and Thursday nights from the store, with distances from three to six miles and a walking group.
  • DC Road RunnersRunning the region since 1961, with the Bluemont 5K on the W&OD Trail at Bluemont Park — free to members.
  • Life Time, The Crossing Clarendon113,000 square feet since July 2023, seven studios, open from four in the morning until midnight.
  • Long BridgeThe county's own 50-metre pool and fitness center, membership below.

The river

A federal shoreline

  • The National Park Service holds the bankAlmost every foot of Potomac shoreline in Arlington is federal parkland, which is what keeps the river's edge green and puts the Mount Vernon Trail along it.
  • Four high schools rowWashington-Liberty, Yorktown, Wakefield and Bishop O'Connell all run crew. The first program started in 1949, and in 1958 it became the first American public high school invited to Henley Royal Regatta.

Where you actually put a boat in

  • Key Bridge BoathouseKayaks, paddleboards and lessons at 3500 Water Street NW in Georgetown — directly across the river from Rosslyn, and the closest livery to Arlington. It is in the District.
  • Belle Haven MarinaSailboats, canoes, kayaks and paddleboards on the parkway below Alexandria, with a two-hour minimum and walk-ins welcome.

What is coming

  • A county boathouse, at $20–30 millionSouth of Key Bridge near Roosevelt Island, joining federal parkland to county land near Rosslyn. Design firm selection is under way, community engagement is expected in late 2026, and the target is the end of the decade.
  • Ninety-nine out of a hundredArlington's ParkScore access rating, and a 97 for investment. The boathouse is the piece still to come.

05 — The Table

Where the county eats

Two rooms in the county made Washingtonian's hundred best this year. The ones residents actually name are older, smaller, and within walking distance.

01

Ireland's Four Courts

2051 Wilson Boulevard, and the anchor of Courthouse since 1996. In August 2022 a driver having a medical emergency drove into the pub and a fire followed; nine people went to hospital. It reopened thirteen months later with twenty feet of the salvaged mantle inscribed with a John O'Donohue poem. In March 2026 a national vote named it America's best soccer bar.

Courthouse
02

Galaxy Hut

Twenty-eight rotating taps and live original music most Sundays, on Wilson Boulevard since 1990. It calls itself northern Virginia's first craft beer spot, and everything on the menu can be made vegan.

Clarendon
03

Lost Dog Cafe

Opened in Westover in 1985 as a wine, beer and cheese shop. The owners founded the Lost Dog & Cat Rescue Foundation in 2001, which now rehomes more than two thousand animals a year.

Westover
04

Bob & Edith's Diner

On Columbia Pike since 1969, opened by Bob and Edith Bolton and now run by their grandchildren. The library has recorded its oral history.

Columbia Pike
05

Westover Market & Beer Garden

A neighborhood grocery that opened what it says was the region's first beer garden in 2009, behind a wall of bottles.

Westover
06

Metro 29 Diner

A New York-style diner on Langston Boulevard since 1995, with an in-house bakery running eighteen kinds of pastry.

Cherrydale
07

Padaek

Lao and Thai at the Arlington Ridge shopping center. 42nd in Washingtonian's 100 Very Best Restaurants for 2026, up from 57th the year before.

Arlington Ridge
08

Cafe Colline

French, on Langston Boulevard. 80th in the same list, and on it for a fourth consecutive year.

Lee Heights

Coffee, independently owned

  • Northside SocialClarendon. A café, wine bar, bakery and coffeehouse in one building on Wilson Boulevard, with a pastry chef who was a 2026 RAMMY finalist.
  • Bayou BakeryCourthouse. David Guas's beignets and Southern foodways, fifteen years in.
  • SIMONA CaféColonial Village. Locally owned, coffee by day and wine by evening, in the old Java Shack space on Franklin Road.
  • Commonwealth JoePentagon City. Small-batch single origin, roasted locally, poured from a nitro tap system.

Shopping in Clarendon

  • The Crossing ClarendonTen acres and 419,950 square feet on one of Arlington's best shopping streets, drawing about three million visits a year. Built in 2001 as Market Common, renamed in 2021, owned by Regency Centers.
  • Kinder Haus ToysOn North Fillmore Street since 1982, family-owned, and unembarrassed about calling itself old-fashioned.
  • Barnes & Noble came back smallerReopened in May 2026 at 14,041 square feet, about half its former footprint. Three Notch'd Brewing and Xi'an Famous Foods took the rest.
  • The Clarendon AllianceA membership organization founded in 1985 to champion the neighborhood, and the voice of the Clarendon community since. It still runs Clarendon Day every September.

Newer arrivals

  • CieloA Latin supper club that opened in Clarendon in June 2026, with a kitchen out of Seven Reasons and DJs until two.
  • Taqueria XochiGuerrero-style tacos on South Eads Street, a 2026 RAMMY finalist for casual restaurant of the year.
  • Ruthie's All-DayWood smoke and biscuits in Arlington Heights, a 2026 RAMMY finalist for best brunch.
  • Nighthawk BreweryThe county's brewery, in Pentagon City since 2022. Three Notch'd is building a 350-seat taproom in Clarendon for late 2026.

The calendar

  • Arlington County Fair12–16 August 2026, its fiftieth. Thomas Jefferson Community Center, free admission.
  • Four Courts Four MilerThe pub's own road race through Courthouse before St Patrick's Day, back on the calendar in March 2026 with about a thousand runners.
  • Columbia Pike Blues Festival13 June 2026 at Penrose Square, twenty-ninth edition, free.
  • Rosslyn Jazz Fest12 September 2026 at Gateway Park, thirty-fourth edition.

06 — Family

What the schools return

A household paying $1.053 per $100 of assessed value is buying the most expensive public education in Northern Virginia — and the class of 2025 took $97.9 million in scholarships out of it.

$26,548Cost per pupil in the adopted FY2027 school budget of $860.3 million. The highest in Northern Virginia, up 23 percent in five years.
97.8%Graduation rate across the three comprehensive high schools, class of 2025. 84 percent of students take AP, IB or dual-enrolment coursework.
27,589Students across 41 schools and programs, taught by a faculty of whom 80 percent hold a master's degree.
69%Of the class of 2025 earned an advanced diploma, and the class collected $97.9 million in scholarships.

The schools this audience asks about

  • Yorktown · Washington-Liberty · WakefieldThe three comprehensive high schools. U.S. News ranked Yorktown 11th and Washington-Liberty 24th in Virginia for 2025–26. Washington-Liberty carries the IB Diploma Program.
  • Arlington TechA project-based program for grades 9–12 at the Career Center, with dual enrolment through Northern Virginia Community College and a senior capstone. 494 students now; the plan doubles it to about 1,000 by 2029–30.
  • The Grace Hopper CenterThe new career center opens for the 2026–27 school year with over 1,600 full-time seats and room for 900 part-time CTE students.

And the rest of it

Eight libraries, 3.6 million checkouts.

  • Central Library plus seven branchesAurora Hills, Cherrydale, Columbia Pike, Courthouse, Glencarlyn, Shirlington and Westover — plus a makerspace and a local history center.
  • 3.6 million checkouts in 2025The county's ten-year capital plan moves planning for the Central Library site up the priority list, though no money is allocated this cycle.
  • Eight branches and a makerspaceThe Shop at Central Library, plus the Charlie Clark Center for Local History. Planning for the Central Library site has moved up the county's ten-year capital priorities.

07 — The Ground

Neighborhoods

Where the money lives, and what each corridor is actually for.

Tap a shape or a place to open its guide · pinch or drag to explore

Civic association Federal site Building massing D.C. neighborhood Potomac Bridge Metrorail by line Named place

Metropolitan Park is open below to start with. Tap or click any other shape on the map to swap the guide for its own. Metropolitan Park and the two Amazon HQ2 parcels have full pages; the rest show their entry until theirs is written. Buildings and monuments are extruded to height: the Washington Monument, Pentagon, Netherlands Carillon and the HQ2 towers use published figures, the rest are indicative massing. PenPlace is drawn flat because it is approved but unbuilt.

Provenance

Every figure above came from one of these.

Where a source is dated, the date is given. Where two sources disagree, the page says so.

Where a figure could not be traced to its publisher, it is not printed. Rankings are attributed to the body that produced them, with the geography each one actually measures: the fitness index and the livability index rank places coterminous with the county, while the Milken index ranks a multi-county metropolitan division.