The Washington region’s job market has recovered from the economic downturn more quickly than any other major metropolitan area, thanks in large part to government hiring and spending.
The Washington metropolitan region added 41,800 new payroll jobs during the 12-month period ending in July, according to a new report from the research firm Delta Associates.
Los Angeles, New York and Chicago, the only three metropolitan areas with more workers than the D.C. region, each shed between 28,000 and 70,000 jobs during the same period.
The report said government hiring and spending were responsible for buoying the Washington region’s job market.
“During this recession, the only place that was hiring was the government,” said Jim Dinegar, president of the Greater Washington Board of Trade.
Dinegar said the country’s continuing presence in Iraq and Afghanistan bolstered defense spending and defense-related job growth around Washington and said the disbursement of economic stimulus funds also helped create jobs in and around the District.
“The hundreds of billions of dollars of stimulus money — that was an enormous shot in the arm, and we really benefited from it in this area,” he said.
Federal hiring accounted for roughly 19,700 of the D.C. area’s new jobs. Those government jobs alone outpaced hiring in every major metropolitan area save Dallas-Fort Worth and Boston.
Federal spending also led to increased hiring in D.C.’s private sector. Professional and business service firms, which often provide contract work for the government, added about 13,500 new jobs last year thanks to an estimated $84 billion in government procurement spending.
Despite the recession, the roughly 42,000 jobs D.C. added last year eclipsed historical job growth in the area. The Washington region’s employment market has added an average of 37,000 new jobs each year during the past 20 years. The Delta Associates report estimates the Washington region would recover every job lost during the recession by early to mid-2011.
The Washington region’s unemployment rate fell to 6.2 percent in July, the lowest among all major metropolitan areas and well below the national average of 9.5 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The area’s private companies and public agencies employ a work force of about 3 million people, who fuel the Washington region’s roughly $400 billion economy.
