By Adam Pagnucco.
Part One covered the methodology of this series. Part Two covered total employment. Part Three examined private employment. Part Four looked at establishments. Part Five looked at real total wages paid. Part Six covered real total wages paid per job. Part Seven examined labor market exposure to the federal government. Today, let’s summarize.
The six charts below compare MoCo to the combined total of the other nine jurisdictions on each of the key economic stats seen earlier in this series. Each chart assigns 2001, the first year of data, a base of 100 for each series. This enables an apples-to-apples growth comparison of MoCo to its peers.
In real total wages paid per job, MoCo kept up with its neighbors. In federal government employment, MoCo did better than its neighbors. In everything else, MoCo lagged – often badly.
The cumulative evidence of this data is bad for our county. Our private jobs base is stagnant. Federal jobs have grown and sustain our wage levels because they pay better than jobs in the private sector and state and local governments. But those jobs are under direct threat from Donald Trump, perhaps the most anti-federal government president ever. Other jurisdictions will be injured of course, but most of them have seen decades of private sector job growth. What about us?
The need to strengthen our private sector economy, long recognized in word but mostly ignored in deed by our elected leaders, is more critical than ever.