DC has officially lost 83,000 jobs since the pandemic. That shock is equivalent to the population of one of DC’s eight wards, and the actual job loss is even bigger. While our economic troubles have been celebrated in some circles as revenge on “the elites,” the fact is these job losses have inflicted tremendous pain on thousands of families, many of whom have nothing to do with the politics that some people hate.
This post will cover how DC grew for over 20 years and what has broken since 2020. In the next post, I’ll cover how we can rebuild in a post-COVID world where some of the old jobs are never coming back.
What’s behind DC’s economic slowdown?
The obvious culprit, federal layoffs, is only part of the story. The impact of our job losses goes even further. DC is home to 693,000 people, we’re the center of a 6.4 million person metro area, and, as our nation’s capital, our local issues often attract national attention. If these economic setbacks create a self-reinforcing cycle, we’re in danger of seeing the job losses, population decline, and local government austerity that so many other American cities have already experienced.
