The Washington region’s job market during the recession drew more Americans over the past few years than it has in decades, but the region’s uncertain economic outlook could cut off the flow, a new study has found.
The region tends to be a draw for people from other parts of the country when Washington’s economy is performing better than the rest of the nation, according to the study released this week by the George Mason University Center for Regional Analysis. Cases in point: the government contracting boom in the late 1980s and the counterterrorism spending boom in the early 2000s.
But the past two years have seen an unprecedented increase, making the Washington metropolitan area “epicenter of domestic migration through the Great Recession,” said the report’s author Lisa Sturtevant.
| Washington drawing from other cities | |
| Net domestic | |
| Year | migration (households) |
| 2004-05 | -3,995 |
| 2005-06 | -12,316 |
| 2006-07 | -10,258 |
| 2007-08 | -6,643 |
| 2008-09 | 8,624 |
| 2009-10 | 14,157 |
“We pull people from other places when other places aren’t doing so well,” she said, adding, “these are people who drive our economy.”
Previously, much of the region’s population growth could be attributed to foreign migration from Latin America, Asia and Africa. But the availability of jobs for highly skilled workers at a time when many Americans were being laid off created a boom that drew a net 9,000 households in 2009, and more than 14,000 in 2010, according to the report.
However, Sturtevant also questions whether that trend can continue in the face of expected job cuts when the federal government begins slashing spending next year.
“Our ability to attract highly skilled workers from other places is going to be critical in order for us to grow — more important than it has ever been,” Sturtevant said.
Jim Dinegar, president and CEO of the Greater Washington Board of Trade, said business leaders are concerned about what the cuts will mean for the region’s federal economy. But he pointed to several areas that he feels could fill the void for highly skilled workers.
“The university sector is a very big engine of growth in this region,” Dinegar said. “Strong enrollments at all our universities continue to be a good driver for undergraduates as well as graduate students. It’s constant growth, and it doesn’t seem to be showing any signs of slowing down.”
Health sector and the cybersecurity are also strong sectors in Maryland and Virginia that Dinegar said will continue to attract skilled workers as the region supports more than a dozen major hospitals and Fort Meade’s Cyber Command center employs more than 60,000 people.
“That Cyber Command is the future ‘Pentagon’ of technology,” he said.
