It’s no secret that Montgomery County has seen slower economic growth in recent years, in large part due to contraction in federal employment.
But a new report by Baltimore-based Sage Policy Group released Friday morning shows just how bad it’s gotten, with the report’s author using stark words to illustrate the problems.
“The level of underperformance is shocking,” said Sage CEO Anirban Basu. “It’s shockingly slow for a county that is so educated, that is so well situated and home to the FDA, NIH, and a burgeoning biotech cluster. This would not be shocking for some county in West Virginia or Montana. But this is Montgomery County, Maryland. We are talking about an information economy. One would think that Montgomery County would be booming and it’s not.”
The report, titled “The Coming Storm: How Years of Economic Underperformance are Catching up with Montgomery County,” was commissioned by advocacy group Empower Montgomery to analyze the rate of economic progress in the county. It was scheduled to be unveiled Friday morning at a county executive candidate forum held by the Montgomery County Business Roundtable, a coalition of business groups that includes Empower Montgomery, which says its mission is to “positive political conditions” to expand economic opportunity.