The District’s unemployment rate fell slightly in November to 11.8 percent, though experts expect the figure to climb again in the coming months as the hospitality, construction and financial sectors bleed jobs.
D.C.’s unemployment rate remains nearly two points higher than the national average despite November’s 0.1 percent decline from October. The city’s economy, long boosted by the federal presence in Washington, hasn’t experienced unemployment this high since the Great Depression.
About 39,200 District residents were out of work last month, unchanged from October, according to Department of Employment Services numbers released Friday. The total number of employed residents rose by 1,200 to 219,800.
The leisure and hospitality, financial activities, information, and construction sectors lost 1,700 jobs. The professional, business, educational and health services sectors gained 1,900 jobs.
The problem for D.C. residents is not a lack of work, D.C. leaders say, but that contractors often look to the suburbs for workers. That issue will remain until the District strengthens its “first source” agreements requiring that private businesses hire D.C. residents first, said at-large D.C. Councilman Michael Brown.
“There’s still this ongoing myth about D.C. workers, that they’re not trained enough or have the capacity to fill those jobs, which they clearly do,” Brown said Friday. “I think we have to try and figure out how to be a little tougher on this issue. This is one of the things that can help the District and why we have to be hard about it.”
Chief Financial Officer Natwar Gandhi has said he does not expect the D.C. economy to return to pre-recession levels until mid-2012. In his most recent revenue estimates, Gandhi predicted a 12.4 percent unemployment rate in the first quarter of 2010.
Preliminary fiscal 2009 revenues
» Real property up 8 percent to $1.8 billion
» Sales taxes down 5.1 percent to $963 million
» Individual income taxes down 16.1 percent to $1.13 billion
» Corporate franchise taxes down 22.9 percent to $220.7 million
The result: a steep decline in individual and corporate income tax revenues, falling sales tax revenues, and rising commercial office space vacancies. Weakness in job growth and incomes “both reached their low point” in fiscal 2009, Gandhi told D.C.’s elected leaders last week, but the District’s recovery “from all aspects of the national recession will … be an unfolding process.”
