Alec MacGillis, NY Times - As a result of Elon Musk’s relentless scythe, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, the big layoffs are in and around Washington. In the week ending Feb. 22, unemployment claims in the District of Columbia rose 25 percent from the week prior and were four times as high as one year earlier — and that’s only the beginning. The district’s chief financial officer has predicted that the city, where the federal government accounts for roughly a quarter of wages, could lose as many as 40,000 jobs over the next few years, more than a fifth of its total, which he estimates would cost the city more than $1 billion in revenue....
The losses are already manifest beyond the numbers: in the résumés from highly educated professionals flooding LinkedIn, in pleas from laid-off young people seeking others to take over their apartment leases, in hushed discussions about this or that family pulling up stakes and leaving town...
All of this raises a question that was unfathomable until recently: Is
the nation’s capital, so long blessed by being the government’s company
town, at risk of a fate resembling that of so many other company towns
through the years? And if it is, why aren’t people beyond metro
Washington more concerned about it? When Detroit was in free fall, Mr.
Obama intervened to bail out the auto industry, deciding a great
American city needed help. But now the administration in power is itself
driving the fateful blow to a major city.
No comments:
Post a Comment