Really? DC?

I found this blog posting and thought it was interesting. I know that many mainframe developers are currently assignment-shopping -- perhaps stimulus projects are the Holy Grail. Full text reprinted below.

Looking for a job? Look for it in D.C.

The increase in government spending and the stimulus package are turning Washington, D.C. into a place to look for a job.

In many big US cities unemployment rate is a two-digit figure reaching as high as 17% in Detroit. However, there is an exception: Washington, D.C. (also including Northern Virginia, and parts of Maryland). Stimulus spending caused a boom in government jobs and has kept the unemployment rate down to approximately 6%, which is among the lowest in the country.

In the beginning of the recession, the D.C. metro area was considered the top place for job seekers to avoid due to manufacturing and construction industries that have been severely affected by the downturn. But Washington’s leading industry is the federal government expansion, which actually has to expand to remedy high unemployment and slow economy.

The expansion includes the fastest-growing homeland security division, which didn’t exist just a few years ago. And the recent stimulus package that Congress passed in February, helps to create a great number of new federal employee positions to oversee infrastructure projects spending, renewable energy grants, and many other things.

The more money is spent by the government, the more federal oversight needed to ensure it gets spent accurately and responsibly. It also means more academics to think it over, more policy-makers to create new policies, more lawyers to resolve conflicts, and more reporters to write articles about it, etc.

Of course, D.C. hasn’t been entirely unaffected by the downturn. The unemployment is slowly growing, but at a fraction of the rate of other metropolitan areas.