By Adam Pagnucco.
Last summer, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released preliminary estimates for employment, establishments and wages paid for local jurisdictions in 2024. I have studied these numbers for the largest jurisdictions in the D.C. region several times in the past. It’s time to do it again.
How does MoCo compare to the rest of the region?
First, some notes on methodology. Data in this series comes from BLS’s Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) program. The program relies on employer reporting to state unemployment insurance agencies to calculate employment, establishments and wages paid by industry, state and county. The program has a major advantage in its ability to measure jurisdictions all over the country in the exact same way, thereby avoiding the apples and oranges issues that plague many other data sources.
In this series, I will examine five measures – total employment, private employment, establishment count, total wages paid and wages paid per job – for each of the ten largest jurisdictions in the region: the District of Columbia; Frederick, Howard, Montgomery and Prince George’s counties in Maryland; and Alexandria City and Arlington, Fairfax, Loudoun and Prince William counties in Virginia. I will also have a post looking at exposure to federal jobs in each jurisdiction, a looming issue given the federal cuts now being implemented by the Trump administration. This will enable us to see how we size up to our competitors, at least in labor markets.
Generally, I will use three time periods. First, the most recent year (2024’s increase over 2023). Second, a comparison of 2024 to 2019, the year before the pandemic. Third, the increase from 2007 to 2024. I picked 2007 as a base year because it was the year before the Great Recession. This enables short, medium and long-term comparisons.
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.
These numbers are older than the data I published from the Brookings Institution last fall, so why should we care? Right now, local politicians are blaming our economic and budgetary difficulties on the Trump administration. They’re not wrong about that. Trump has declared war on the federal government, which is our core industry. If he were to declare war on the casino industry, Las Vegas would be in trouble. So his administration’s layoffs and funding cuts were bound to cause problems for us.
But the data in this series tells a different story that our leaders are not so quick to discuss: our economic difficulties long predate Trump. We have had competitive shortcomings with regards to our neighbors for many years. Blaming Trump doesn’t change that, and in fact, diverts attention from our self-inflicted wounds. Let’s have a look at them.
We will have more in Part Two.