{"id":755270,"date":"2026-07-10T19:57:17","date_gmt":"2026-07-10T19:57:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/755270\/"},"modified":"2026-07-10T19:57:17","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T19:57:17","slug":"moco-vs-the-region-in-2025-total-employment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/755270\/","title":{"rendered":"MoCo vs the Region in 2025: Total Employment"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Adam Pagnucco.<\/p>\n

Part One<\/a> covered the methodology of this series.\u00a0 Let\u2019s get started by looking at data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics on total employment in the D.C. region\u2019s ten largest jurisdictions.<\/p>\n

First, let\u2019s look at total employment in MoCo since 2001, the first year in the series.\u00a0 It has hovered around 450,000 payroll jobs for a long time, falling during the Great Recession, rising afterwards and falling again during the pandemic.\u00a0 The preliminary job count in 2025 (456,246) is down from last year and is slightly below the level of 20 years ago (458,809).\u00a0 That means we have had twenty years of essentially no job growth.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Now let\u2019s look at change in total employment from 2024 to 2025 by jurisdiction.\u00a0 This captures the first year of President Donald Trump\u2019s second administration.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Seven of the ten largest DC area jurisdictions lost jobs last year.\u00a0 We were hurt worse than most.\u00a0 Remember, these are total jobs, not just federal government jobs.\u00a0 This stat makes me wonder whether the DC metro area suffered an actual recession last year.<\/p>\n

The chart below shows 2025 total employment as a percentage of 2019 total employment.\u00a0 Essentially, it shows the extent to which each jurisdiction\u2019s jobs base has recovered from the pandemic.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

MoCo is one of five big jurisdictions in the region that has not regained its jobs base from before the pandemic.<\/p>\n

Finally, the chart below shows total employment change from 2007 \u2013 the year before the Great Recession \u2013 to last year.\u00a0 This is equivalent to two business cycles of data.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

MoCo is only one of two jurisdictions shown that has lost jobs since the pre-Great Recession peak.\u00a0 Only Alexandria, the region\u2019s weakest jurisdiction, trailed us.<\/p>\n

Local politicians blame Trump for job losses, and over the past year, they are probably right.\u00a0 But this data shows that we have been deficient on this measure for decades.<\/p>\n

Next: federal government employment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Adam Pagnucco. Part One covered the methodology of this series.\u00a0 Let\u2019s get started by looking at data…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":755271,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[6076,28,101,323636],"class_list":["post-755270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-adam-pagnucco","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-economy-2026-series"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/755270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=755270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/755270\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/755271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=755270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=755270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=755270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}