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: InfoComm Industry Study
: Area Economy |
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InfoComm in the Washington Area Economy, 1980-1998 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Washington area economy was the second fastest growing metropolitan area in the nation
during the Eighties but its economy was hard hit by the 1990-1991 recession (see Table 3).
And, its expansion since the recession has been undercut by the Clinton Administration's
National Performance Review that established the downsizing the of the federal workforce
as a major national goal.
This federal downsizing cost the Washington area economy almost 60,000 net jobs or 14.5 percent during the past five years. Also, during this post-recession period, the District of Columbia government reduced its workforce by 15,700 jobs or 26.2 percent The local economy's ability to sustain a moderate rate of growth during this period of significant sectoral restructuring underscores the significant expansion occurring in the private sector over the past eighteen years. A major source of this expansion was the accelerated growth of the InfoComm Industry.
Gross Regional Product in the Washington PMSA, 1980-1998 (GRP in billions of 1998 dollars)
InfoComm and Total Employment Growth, 1980-1990 Washington PMSA (employment in thousands)
Over the 1988-1995 in the Washington area, inclusive of the recession and the first two
years of federal and District of Columbia downsizing, the InfoComm Industry average 2.5
percent annual job growth while the total employment base gains just 0.8 percent annual
(see Figure 1). In comparison, at the national level, job growth in the InfoComm Industry
also averaged 2.5 percent annually but overall employment grew at 1.4 percent considerably
outperforming the Washington area.
These differential job growth rates have resulted in the InfoComm Industry becoming more
specialized within the Washington area since the recession and, as a result, it has increased
its relative contribution to the area's economy. As shown in Figure 2, InfoComm has been
almost twice as concentrated in the Washington area as in the nation and, in the Nineties,
it has become even more concentrated. While in the years preceding the recession, InfoComm
employment in the Washington area accounted for just under two-times (1.98) its share in the
national base, since the recession its share has increased to more than two times (2.04);
InfoComm now accounts for 10.4 percent of area employment compared to 5.0 percent nationally.
In the six years since the recession (1992-1998), the InfoComm Industry has grown to 344,455
jobs and is now equivalent in size to the federal civilian workforce. During this six-year
period, it added 66,600 new jobs while the federal workforce was losing almost 60,000 jobs.
And, the InfoComm directly accounted 18.8 percent of the private sector's increase of 353,500
new jobs. With InfoComm's 2.01 multiplier, its direct job generation accounted indirectly
for 67,300 other new jobs in the Washington area. Together, the direct and indirect
new jobs associated with the Infocom Industry accounted for 38 percent of the total job
growth generated in the area since the recession.
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