Fairfax County and growth of professional and business services jobs in Washington, DC area

January 31, 2007

The Washington metropolitan area added 228,920 private-sector professional and business services jobs from the first quarter of 1990 to the first quarter of 2005, an expansion of 61.6 percent. However, the District of Columbia, the traditional job core of the Washington metropolitan area and home to a significant portion of the federal workforce, was not the main locus of this growth.

[Chart data—TXT]

Instead, the growth in professional and business services jobs was concentrated in the suburbs, with Fairfax County, Virginia, accounting for 45.4 percent of the increase. Fairfax County added 103,925 workers in professional and business services over the 15-year period ending in 2005, more than any other jurisdiction.

The District of Columbia added 31,011 professional and business services jobs to its workforce during this time span, and Montgomery County, Maryland, 29,696. Prince George’s County, Maryland, and Loudoun County, Virginia, rounded out the top five in professional and business services growth with the addition of 12,674 and 12,342 jobs, respectively.

The BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages program produced these data. Data presented here are for workers covered by State and Federal unemployment insurance programs. To learn more, see "Industry dynamics in the Washington, DC, area: has a second job core emerged?" (PDF) by Gerald Perrins and Diane Nilsen, Monthly Labor Review, December 2006.