Greater Washington has a jobs problem.
It’s not the overall number of jobs the region continues to add month after month, including 67,600 added on an annual basis in August, it’s that these jobs pay less and contribute less to the economy — and that can cause problems for the region, according to a new report by the Stephen S. Fuller Institute at George Mason University released Wednesday at its new annual economic forum.
The region lost 180,300 private sector jobs during the Great Recession, but has since added 411,500 jobs, which on paper seems good. But the economic value of each job lost was about $160,233 per worker, while the average value of each job gained was $109,916 per worker.
Much of this decline is because of the types of jobs being added, which include lower-paying jobs in the hospitality, food services and health care industries, according to Stephen Fuller.
“A guy washing dishes or waiting on tables or doing clerical work doesn’t have the same value add to the economy as someone splitting genes or building algorithms,” Fuller said.