“Or another way to look at it is Metro,” the regional transit system, he says. “We think that’s because those jobs are really kind of indirect jobs that are somewhat dependent on the vibrancy that the federal government being in the office offers.” The total number of jobs has dropped significantly, notably in hospitality. “It is a challenge to have a quarter of the economy sitting on the sidelines,” Falcicchio says. jobs represent roughly a quarter of the total employment base the government also occupies a third of Washington office space - not just the cabinet departments whose ornate headquarters dot Federal Triangle, but plenty of the faceless privately held buildings in the canyons around Farragut Square, too. According to John Falcicchio, the city’s economic-development boss and Bowser’s chief of staff, the federal government’s 200,000 D.C. To people who depend on commuters’ lunch-hour spending or transit fees, the change is less welcome. (It also might accomplish, inadvertently, the longtime GOP goal of moving chunks of the bureaucracy away from the capital.) Beyond the fact that some people just don’t much like commuting to an office every day, the prospect of being able to work from home even if home means Tennessee or Texas is good for retention, since a federal paycheck goes a lot farther once you leave one of the nation’s priciest metro areas. Last year, when Biden in his State of the Union address signaled his intent to bring workers back, it caused alarms among some workers - and not much impact on most agencies’ occupancy rates.įor federal employees, and the public they serve, the new flexibility has some upsides. Officially, a lot of the changes are only temporary, but it’s hard to see things simply flop back to the way they were. After Covid, parts of the government caught up in a hurry, embracing telework in the name of public health. Pre-pandemic, only 3 percent of feds teleworked daily, even as the private-sector workforce across the country had made at least some strides. But it’s also a function of the city’s top employer.įederal telework policies vary, but in general they’re generous - a major change from the situation that prevailed before 2020. To some extent, this status is a function of Washington’s economy (which is long on knowledge workers and professionals, short on factories and warehouses) and its demographics (which are thick with the sorts of blue-state rule-followers who most energetically embraced Covid precautions). Want to read more stories like this? POLITICO Weekend delivers gripping reads, smart analysis and a bit of high-minded fun every Friday. Week-to-week numbers from the security firm Kastle Systems back this up: The company, whose key fobs are used in office buildings around the country (including the one that houses POLITICO), compiles real-time occupancy data based on card swipes in its 10 largest markets. And while some of the broad factors that caused the whipsaw change from municipal optimism to civic anxiety are beyond any local pol’s control, bringing Uncle Sam’s workers back is something denizens of D.C.’s government think mayoral cajoling might affect.Īccording to census data, Washington has the highest work-from-home rate in the country. Officials now privately worry about a return to the bad old days when the District, unable to pay its bills, was forced to throw itself on the mercy of Newt Gingrich’s Congress. The city’s remarkable quarter-century run of population growth and economic dynamism and robust tax revenues seems in danger. Streets are noticeably emptier and businesses scarcer. In the 9-to-5 core of Washington, though, there’s no mistaking the 2023 reality with the pre-Covid world. There are days when downtowns in other American towns can almost look like they did before 2020. House Oversight Committee chair James Comer also signaled plans to turn the panel’s investigatory energy toward alleged telework failures.īeing a person who residents blame when they have to start commuting again - let alone being a blue-city Democrat who makes strange bedfellows with GOP ultras - is the sort of thing usually avoided by a pol skilled enough to win a landslide third term as mayor, as Bowser just did.īut the way the local government sees it, something has to give or else the city is in deep trouble. In the process, the Democratic mayor has landed on the same page as some of the most conservative members of the House GOP majority, who last week cosponsored the SHOW UP bill, which would mandate that federal agencies return to their pre-Covid office arrangements within 30 days.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |