By Adam Pagnucco.
Part One covered the methodology of this series. Part Two looked at total employment. Part Three examined federal government employment. Now let’s look at private sector employment.
While the federal government is unquestionably important to MoCo, the private sector has long accounted for roughly 80% of our jobs base. The chart below shows MoCo’s private sector employment since 2001.
MoCo’s private sector grew steadily in the boom years before the Great Recession, peaking at 386,626 payroll jobs in 2006. It has never returned to that level since. We have suffered two decades of private sector job stagnation, a terrible burden for our economy (and our tax base) to bear.
The chart below shows change in private employment by jurisdiction last year.
We were one of seven local jurisdictions to lose private sector jobs last year. Some of these were almost certainly federal contracting jobs. Some were probably also victims of the multiplier effect, in which the problems of one sector spread to others. Multiplier effects are often positive, but that is not true of the D.C. region suffering under President Donald Trump.
But this column – and indeed this series – is about a whole lot more than just Trump. Now let’s look at private sector employment in 2025 as a percentage of private sector employment in 2019. This measures our recovery from the pandemic.
Compared to our large neighbors, only Alexandria has done a worse job at recovering from the pandemic than we have. This was true even before Trump resumed his tenure in office.
Finally, the chart below shows change in private employment from 2007 – the year before the Great Recession – through last year.
This is one of our biggest economic problems – our inability to create private sector jobs at the same pace as most of our competitors. This can’t be blamed just on Trump, who poses a problem for our entire region and not only us. It’s a sign of long-term malaise affecting our economy, our county (and state) budgets and our quality of life.
Next: construction employment.