Before anyone other than The Great Fuzz Ball goes off and says “See, I told you so!” concerning today’s WaPo story on job growth between in the National Capital Subregion let us all take a deep breath.
“Region’s Job Growth a Centrifugal Force” reports that COG found the R=20 plus jurisdictions gained 78,097 jobs vs 94,847 jobs for those outside R= 20. That 16,750 job difference is just 0.7 of one percent of the 2.4 million jobs COG projected to be inside R=20 by 2025.
The growth of 94,847 jobs puts the “outer” jurisdictions well on the way to the 230,000 jobs that were projected by 2025 in this territory but that rate of growth still brings the “outer” areas up to less than 10 percent of the Subregions total jobs inside R=20 at that time. For a summary of these issue see “Where the Jobs Are,” 24 May 2004 at db4.dev.baconsrebellion.com
Besides the small percentage of the Subregion’s jobs this “news” focuses on also consider:
How many of these jobs are construction jobs on housing and residential service projects that will be going away when the buildings are completed? (Have you checked the trajectory of big house prices or how long units are staying on the market in the past six months?)
How many of these jobs are low paying service jobs supported by those with good jobs closer to the centroid (aka, in the “Core”) that have no time to mow their grass, care for their children or even walk their dog?
These are 2000 to 2005 numbers, as Larry Gross points out in his posting on the Gas Shock thread, $4.00 gasoline is going to change “everything.”
One fact is very clear: As of last week, employers were paying twice the rent per square foot for “Class A” places for employees near the centroid and within R=10 as they were in the R=20 to R=30 Radius Band. The latest wage numbers say that is true for the per month earnings as well.
Encouraging new job creation outside R=20 or R=25 (most of the new jobs in both Loudoun and Prince William are within R=25) is a good thing but only as long as those jobs contribute to creating a balance of J / H / S / R / A in Greater Culpeper / Culpeper, Greater Warrenton / Fauquier and other Disaggregated Communities outside the Clear Edge.
The WaPo article says that the “move-out-trend” is supported by the military job move to Ft. Belvoir. Ft Belvoir is just outside R=10, not beyond R=20. How soon the WaPo folks forget the radius map published just 8 days ago.
To its credit the reporter notes that there is a growing consensus that there should be a jobs / housing balance (a J / H / S / R / A Balance) and compact settlement patterns.
The story suggests that the state and municipal agencies continue to do a terrible job of fairly allocating location variable costs and of creating functional, balanced settlement patterns.
EMR