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Workforce trends show challenges for greater Washington

By Jonathan Aberman
From The Washington Post:

It’s critical that community leaders understand our region’s workforce trends. A recent workforce report from LinkedIn is essential reading.

With more than 143 million individual members in the United States and 3 million job postings a month, LinkedIn has a large and current data base to use in identifying employment trends.

LinkedIn’s report shows that of the 20 largest metropolitan areas in the United States, Washington, D.C. and its suburbs have the slowest percentage increase in hiring during 2017. Measured against an average hiring increase of 10.8 percent, our region had a hiring increase of only 3.5 percent. That’s worse than the San Francisco Bay area, which had a hiring growth rate of 3.9 percent. Places with diversified local economies and affordable housing performed much better than the national average, with the three fastest growing areas being Houston, Phoenix and Dallas-Fort Worth.

LinkedIn also follows migration of workers and population based upon the profile locations of its members. This effort highlighted the troubling fact that nationally two of the 10 largest losers of workers were nearby: Norfolk was fourth and Baltimore was ninth. The areas with the largest number of lost workers were Providence and Hartford.

Meanwhile, no locality in our region was among the top locations for inward job migration. Places like Austin, Denver and Seattle were top destinations. Our region did rate as one of the most active job markets from the standpoint of inbound and outbound migration taken as a whole, with Washington, D.C. and its suburbs being the sixth most-active region. Austin, San Diego and Orange County, California led the way in migration activity.

LinkedIn also tracks what it describes as emerging jobs–careers where the worker’s skills and role are directly relevant to the growth of technology-driven businesses. Our region attracted workers in many of the emerging job categories, including data mining, business development and relationship management, and sales. It was not alone in looking to attract these workers, however, as our region faced strong competition for these valuable workers from the San Francisco Bay area, New York City, Los Angeles and Dallas.

Unfortunately, according to LinkedIn, we are not winning this competition.

Our region is not attracting workers at the rates of competing regions. In fact, we are losing workers. The top three locations for outbound migration from our region were the San Francisco Bay area, Denver and Seattle. Observers who have suggested that we are losing people who want to be software product entrepreneurs will likely find vindication in this data. Meanwhile, within our region, Washington, D.C. and its suburbs gained workers through inbound migration from Baltimore, Norfolk and Charlottesville. Redistributing workers may create pockets of growth, but does not provide for regional growth overall.

What is clear from the LinkedIn data is that we have jobs going unfilled because we are not attracting, retaining, or training a sufficient number of workers, particularly in emerging job categories. This conclusion is consistent with a recent report produced by the Greater Washington Partnership, as well as past reports prepared by regional experts such as Steven Fuller.

At some point we must acknowledge what data and experts are telling us: without concerted action, our region will have a continued mismatch between our workforce and available jobs. In the long term, employers will either find the workers they need here, or they will relocate their businesses to elsewhere. In the near term, every available high-paying job that is unfilled is an economic opportunity lost.

Unless we ensure that our region is focused on being an enticing place to live, and develop effective processes to develop the skilled workforce we need, we will continue to lag behind competing economies around the nation and the world. And over time we will likely fall further and further behind.

If you aren’t concerned, you aren’t paying attention.

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Jonathan Aberman is a business owner, entrepreneur and founder of TandemNSI, a national community that connects innovators to government agencies. He is host of “What’s Working in Washington” on WFED, a program that highlights business and innovation, and he lectures at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business.