Growth in D.C.’s leisure, hospitality and government sectors kept its employment levels essentially flat last year, while employment dropped in Virginia and Maryland.
D.C.’s employment declined 0.2 percent in 2009, and Maryland and Virginia employment dropped 2.8 and 3.2 percent, respectively, according the Richmond Federal Reserve’s annual report.
The federal government has consistently boosted the regional economy, along with the tourists that continued to flock to the area despite a shaky economy. D.C.’s leisure and hospitality sector grew 1.6 percent and its government sector grew 3.8 percent last year, the report said.
D.C.’s attraction as a “world city” helps boost its hospitality industry, said Larry Yu, professor of hospitality management at George Washington University. “It [doesn’t] only attract domestic visitors; it also attracts international visitors,” he said.
Indeed, the number of foreign visitors to D.C. increased from 1.47 million to 1.54 million in 2009, according to the Department of Commerce.
“We have seen some … organizations slow down their recruitment on campus, but others pick up the slack, basically,” Yu said. “D.C. is really now the capital of several major hotel groups — Hilton, Marriott, Choice [Hotels] International.”
Employment in professional and business services is coming back as well. The District gained 5,300 of these jobs in March compared with the previous year, according to the Fed’s most recent economic snapshot of the region.
These include jobs that require more education and higher skills, such as lawyers, architects, and computer software writers, said Andy Bauer, a regional economist with the Baltimore branch of the Richmond Fed.
“You would expect that category to … rebound first,” he said. “We’ve seen that … in Maryland.”
Yu was bullish on the continued vitality of the hospitality sector.
“Even though the economy still has a lot of uncertainty … we still feel very positive,” he said. “People always travel, and they travel for different purposes — meetings, events — and they stay in hotels.”
