It’s over! On Tuesday DC residents headed to the polls for the primaries, to select each party’s candidates for Mayor, DC Council Chair, and other Council positions. Since the winner of DC’s Democratic primary almost always wins the general election, we all generally now have a good sense of who will be leading our city come January.
Now on to the next big question: What should they do?
A big part of the agenda should be helping DC residents recover from this devastating recession. Throughout this campaign season, the economy–and more specifically, jobs and unemployment–has been a top concern of DC voters. The late August Washington Post poll found that 21 percent of respondents reported “creating more jobs/employment opportunities” as the biggest problem facing the District. In fact, it was No. 2 just behind improving public education. Contrast that to four years ago, when only 3 percent of respondents to the Post‘s poll cited unemployment as the biggest problem facing the city.
The recession has been felt throughout the city, but some parts of the District have fared far worse than others. The impact has been most acute in neighborhoods east of the Anacostia River, where at least one in five residents are unemployed, according to city data. Both Vince Gray and Kwame Brown, who won the Democratic nominations for mayor and DC Council Chairman, respectively, made jobs a key talking point in their campaigns. We hope it will remain a major focus, as we transition from campaign rhetoric to public policy.
It’s not simply a matter of creating more jobs. In a previous post, we noted that although the number of jobs in the District increased in July, the number of employed District residents actually decreased. The federal government and private sector have been adding jobs here in DC, but the fact is that District residents don’t have the skills to get them. Certainly improving public education will help with the skills gap, but we need to also focus on the parents of youngsters who need critical literacy and job skills now. We also need to be realistic about the jobs we are likely to see in the District and craft a strategy to train more of our residents for them.
Investing in our neighbors will help all of us. Even in this time of tight budgets, the District must make the necessary investments in job training programs and other mechanisms to ensure that its residents are prepared to compete for the jobs of the 21st century. Lower unemployment means a broader tax base for the city and a decreased strain on public services.
We are emboldened that jobs have been part of the campaign discussion. Now it is up to all of us–elected officials as well as citizens, advocacy groups, and neighborhood organization–to continue to keep the critical issue of jobs and unemployment front and center in the upcoming weeks, months and years.
