ROCKVILLE — Here’s the good news: Montgomery County’s unemployment rate is relatively low at 3.4 percent. The not-so-good news: No one actually works in Montgomery County.
Instead, much of the county’s workforce schleps it daily to places like The District and northern Virginia, a panel of experts told the county council’s economic-development committee Thursday. And having a county full of commuters can have its economic pitfalls, the experts argued.
“We have to have the jobs here, so that we have the money to support education and all the other things that make our quality of life what it is,” Gigi Godwin, with the county’s chamber of commerce, told committee members.
In the last year, private-industry payrolls in Montgomery County lopped off 1,300 jobs. And don’t expect any job growth this year either, even with the county’s 2,000 new federal jobs, David Platt, chief economist with the county’s department of finance, said.
Why are jobs leaving the county? A couple of different reasons, the experts said.
First, peg it on the region’s housing recession. Overall, the region has seen a 27 percent decline in home sales, which has quashed job growth in the construction and service industries, according to John McClain, with George Mason University’s school of public policy.
Second, despite fierce competition for talent, workers from other parts of the country are actively discouraged from relocating to Montgomery County, the chamber of commerce’s Godwin testified. Pin that on the county and state’s complicated tax structure, she said.
Third (and here’s the real rub), startup companies nurtured by the county’s business incubators are being acquired — and relocated — by northern Virginia firms, Godwin added. When that action goes down, the jobs must be backfilled, she argued.
Meanwhile, the county’s department of economic development hustles to attract new companies to the county, said Pradeep Ganguly, the department’s top guy. “When the economy is down, that is the time to be aggressive with the way we market ourselves,” Ganguly told committee members.
Biotech companies from South Korea, India and Israel already call MoCo home, and a new business incubator has sprouted on Montgomery College’s Germantown campus. Another incubator in Wheaton has a waiting list full of small startups, he added. There’s also a computer-tech incubator on Georgia Avenue in South Silver Spring.
But Manuel Hidalgo, executive director of the Latino Economic Development Corp, warned against doling out financial aid. His organization, which offers micro-loans to area small businesses, recently rejected 10 percent of applicants because the businesses couldn’t handle any more debt, he told the committee.
“We’d be giving them the rope to hang themselves,” he said.
So what’s a county to do? Hidalgo called for a sales-tax holiday and lower taxes on booze to stimulate consumer spending. Other panelists recommended lower taxes and looser regs to kick start the construction industry.
“I’m willing to look at discrete steps to make adjustments,” council member Roger Berliner (D-District 1) told the panel.
But at-large Dem Marc Elrich wasn’t digging it. “Those fees are there to provide infrastructure,” he told his colleagues. Without that revenue stream, residents can expect less infrastructure and higher taxes, he warned.
George Leventhal (D-At large) tossed his hands in the air. “If development is barely occurring, then the conversation is moot,” he said.
Photo courtesy of Flickr user Steve Longus.
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Well, it’s a good thing the county is waiting so long to allow for the opening of the music venue in Downtown, we wouldn’t want there to be any new jobs in the arts, or any compelling reason to go to Downtown… And all the retail jobs at the proposed new development at Falkland Chase can also wait.
As the historical merrits of dumpy brick buildings are argued, and as the ‘what does public use really mean’ debate goes on jobs, commerce, culture, wealth, and potential homeowners all go elsewhere. Our schools suffer, our infrastructure suffers and our real estate market suffers.
But we get an ice rink!
I guess I’m an exception…I live and work in MoCo. I’m all of two miles from my office in DTSS.
Those “retail jobs at Falkland Chase” would not pay those workers enough to live in MoCo. And the working people living in those apartments would be displaced. Falkland Chase is not a set of “dumpy brick buildings.” The buildings are beautiful, set into a lovely natural landscape. Residents look out into trees.
Thanks for your comments, LuvMyHood.
Even if retail jobs at Falkland or wherever in DTSS don’t pay a worker enough to live in MoCo, the county still benefits from payroll taxes. That’s on top of the sales tax collected when that worker buys lunch or catches a movie after work.
It’s the same with having Discovery or NOAA in the hood. I’m sure lots of their employees don’t live in DTSS (or maybe MoCo), but I’m glad they’re here.
There are much larger revenue benefits to the county beyond payroll taxes of employees at these developments. Payroll taxes are miniscule compared to: additional sales taxes from the extra 1,000 downtown residents, real estate taxes from revenue generated by a vastly larger development and property taxes based on the value of the property after the development is completed. All-in-all, it adds up.
I moved to Montgomery County with my parents when I was 6, in 1963.
In all of the intervening time, once I got past being a teenager, I have never had anything other than short-term contract jobs in MoCo.
Even those I didn’t enjoy; the commuting is terrible, the endless harassment over smoking is hellish.
luvmyhood, I came across a crazily apt statement by Gene Weingarten today that could apply to Falkland:
“It is impossible for a neighborhood of garden apartments to be cool. Everyone who lives their either is, or wants to be, the sort of person who wears socks with sandals.”
He was talking about Queens, but it still applies. Note that I think this is more funny than true.
Jennifer, the payroll tax is pretty regressive. We need an income tax that hits the CEOs and the K Street denizens at progressively higher rates.
Woodsider, your post scares me. When any given piece of land becomes a cow to be milked for tax revenue, watch out. People need stability in their homes and neighborhoods. We need to start making stuff in this economy again, instead of coming up with new financial “products” to sell and resell; endless tax cuts for those who profit most from society; and waves of displacement rolling through middle-and working-class communities.