A government contractor is a company (privately owned, publicly traded or a state-owned enterprise) â either for profit or non-profit â that produces goods or services under contract for the government. Some communities are largely sustained by government contracting activity; for instance, much of the economy of Northern Virginia consists of government contractors employed directly or indirectly by the federal government of the United States.
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ð Government contractor in the context of Gross regional domestic product
Gross regional domestic product (GRDP), gross domestic product of region (GDPR), or gross state product (GSP) is a statistic that measures the size of a region's economy. It is the aggregate of gross value added (GVA) of all resident producer units in the region, and analogous to national gross domestic product. The GRDP includes regional estimates on the three major sectors including their sub-sectors, namely:
- Raw material sector: Agriculture, animal husbandry, fishery, and forestry.
- Industry sector: Construction, electricity, manufacturing, mining, quarrying, and water.
- Service sector: Communication, finance, private government services, property management, real estate sales, storage, trade, and transport.
"The GRDP is usually presented in nominal and real terms. Nominal GRDP measures the value of the outputs of the economy at current prices. Real GRDP referred to as GRDP at constant prices, measures the value of an economy's output using the prices of a fixed base year. The real GRDP is useful in capturing real output growth since inflationary effects have been removed. It is, therefore, the most widely used measure of real income."
In this Dossier
Government contractor in the context of Alexandria, Virginia
Alexandria is an independent city in Northern Virginia, United States. It lies on the western bank of the Potomac River approximately 7 miles (11Â km) south of Washington, D.C. The city's population of 159,467 at the 2020 census made it the sixth-most populous city in Virginia and 169th-most populous city in the U.S. Alexandria is a principal city of the Washington metropolitan area, which is part of the larger WashingtonâBaltimore combined statistical area.
Like the rest of Northern Virginia and Central Maryland, present-day Alexandria has been influenced by its proximity to the U.S. capital. It is largely populated by professionals working in the federal civil service, in the U.S. military, or for one of the many private companies which contract to provide services to the U.S. federal government. The city's largest employers include the U.S. Department of Defense and the Institute for Defense Analyses. Alexandria is the highest-income independent city in Virginia.
Government contractor in the context of SpaceX
Space Exploration Technologies Corp., commonly known as SpaceX, is a private American aerospace company and space transportation company headquartered at the Starbase development site in Starbase, Texas. Since its founding in 2002, the company has made numerous advances in rocket propulsion, reusable launch vehicles, human spaceflight and satellite constellation technology. As of 2025, SpaceX is the world's dominant space launch provider, its launch cadence eclipsing all others, including private competitors and national programs like the Chinese space program. SpaceX, NASA, and the United States Armed Forces work closely together by means of governmental contracts.
SpaceX was founded by Elon Musk in 2002 with a vision of decreasing the costs of space launches, paving the way to a self-sustaining colony on Mars. In 2008, Falcon 1 successfully launched into orbit after three failed launch attempts. The company then moved towards the development of the larger Falcon 9 rocket and the Dragon 1 capsule to satisfy NASA's COTS contracts for deliveries to the International Space Station. By 2012, SpaceX finished all COTS test flights and began delivering Commercial Resupply Services missions to the International Space Station. Also around that time, SpaceX started developing hardware to make the Falcon 9 first stage reusable. The company demonstrated the first successful first-stage landing in 2015 and re-launch of the first stage in 2017. Falcon Heavy, built from three Falcon 9 boosters, first flew in 2018 after a more than decade-long development process. As of May 2025, the company's Falcon 9 rockets have landed and flown again more than 450 times, reaching 1â3 launches a week.
Government contractor in the context of Graft (politics)
Graft, as understood in American English, is a form of political corruption defined as the unscrupulous use of a politician's authority for personal gain. Political graft occurs when funds intended for public projects are intentionally misdirected in order to maximize the benefits to private interests. When taken on a macro level, graft is a core component of what is known as the grift economy or grift society, although it is possible for the two to be mutually exclusive.
Political graft functions when the public officer is directed to purchase goods or services from a specific private interest at a cost far above regular market rates. The private interest then siphons some of the gratuitous profits to government officials who are able to ensure that future government spending continues in the same fashion so that this lucrative relationship continues. A member of a government may misappropriate directly from government funds, but they may also make decisions benefiting their own private economic interests by using inside knowledge of upcoming government decisions to their benefit, in a manner similar to insider trading.