By Adam Pagnucco.
Last month, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) program released its preliminary estimates for county employment in 2023. The program relies on employer reporting to state unemployment insurance agencies to calculate employment, establishments and wages paid by industry, state and county. I have used this data many times in the past to measure Montgomery County’s economy and compare it to its competitors. It’s time to do that once again.
This year, I’m going to keep things simple. I will ask three questions in order of ascending importance.
How did we do last year?
How are we doing compared to the pre-pandemic era?
And what’s the long term trend?
I will be asking those questions about four specific data series measured by the QCEW program: total employment, private employment, establishments and wages paid.
Now this data comes with a caveat: it is sourced from employers and applies to their payrolls. It does not measure non-employment income. It also does not measure non-payroll work, such as self-employment. That is a non-trivial omission since MoCo is one of the leaders in the D.C. region in proprietors and proprietor income. Proprietor activity, non-employment income and gross domestic product are measured by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, which also releases data by county albeit with a lag. I will be returning to those subjects in the near future.
Another caveat is that these estimates are preliminary and will be revised. In the past, revisions have usually not been substantial and have not reversed long-term trends. Since I often revisit this data, I regularly incorporate revised numbers into my histories.
As you may have guessed from the title of this series, MoCo’s economic fortunes did not improve markedly last year. However, we do better on some measures and some time periods than others and a few of our neighbors sometimes trail us. One jurisdiction in particular – not us! – has suffered an economic meltdown in recent years that is a total outlier in the region. We will identify that ragged non-performer, and begin quantifying our relative performance, in Part Two.