Hank Silverberg, wtop.com
WASHINGTON – A new report says that Virginia is still technically in a recession, despite the reports of strong job growth in the past few months, and the belief that the D.C. area is recession proof.
Northern Virginia continues to do much better than the state as a whole but go south and you’ll find little progress in the last year according to the report from the Commonwealth Institute, an independent, fiscal analysis group.
Institute president Michael Cassidy says that even applies in job-rich Northern Virginia.
“Folks who have just a high school education, they are struggling even in the context of a more robust economic recovery,” says Cassidy.
He says all this comes even before the deficit reduction being mulled by Congress kicks in and cuts federal jobs that are concentrated in Northern Virginia.
“When you start looking at a lot of the tools that Virginia used to manage our way through the recession, like the federal recovery act money, like our state’s rainy day fund, like borrowing from our pension, those are all gone,” says Cassidy.
The institute used 2010 census data for the study.
Here are some more findings:
- One in three unemployed workers was out of work six months or more. Almost double the highest recorded rate.
- Underemployment, people forced to take lower paying jobs below their skill level, or work part time, is at its highest rate in 15 years and higher than any state on the Atlantic seaboard.
- Between 1980 and 2010 the drop in employment rates for Virginians with low levels of education was almost twice than their peers elsewhere in the country.
Read the full report here (PDF).
Follow Hank and WTOP on Twitter.
(Copyright 2011 by WTOP. All Rights Reserved.)
