DC mayor Muriel Bowser has a plan to grow the city’s economy and slash unemployment for low-income residents and people of color. It’s a plan that dovetails with LISC’s intensified commitment to revving up equitable local economies with living wage jobs and equipping residents to get those jobs. In a Washington Post article about Bowser’s initiative, Oramenta Newsome, director of LISC’s DC office, points out the imperative of making prosperity accessible to all: “We must be more deliberate in our efforts to balance out the opportunities in the city,” she said.
This excerpt below is from:
D.C. mayor sets goal to grow private sector to $100 billion, cap unemployment at 10 percent in every ward
By Shaun Courtney, The Washington Post
Last week, D.C. leaders celebrated the groundbreaking of D.C. United’s Audi Field, another sign of the city’s prosperity. But this week comes the reminder that Washington’s robust economic growth in the last decade has left many residents behind.
Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) announced Tuesday her five-year economic development plan to make the city more competitive and more inclusive. She wants to grow the city’s private-sector economy by 20 percent to $100 billion and reduce unemployment to below 10 percent in every ward and across racial demographics and educational attainment levels in the next five years.
The mayor’s 105-page plan focuses on supporting the industries that have served the city well so far (hospitality and tourism, real estate, health care, etc.) and on creating new opportunities in areas that would build on existing market strengths (cybersecurity technology, health-care data analysis, autonomous vehicle innovations, etc.).
“I am confident that this framework will accelerate our progress as a leader for inclusive prosperity by creating opportunities that are accessible to all, supporting longtime businesses and residents, and benefiting our most disadvantaged communities,” Bowser said in a statement.
The federal government accounted for over 30 percent of D.C.’s gross domestic product in 2016 and the District’s income gap ranked in the top five among the 50 largest U.S. cities.
Former mayor Vincent Gray created the city’s first five-year economic development plan in 2012. Gray set out to generate $1 billion in revenue, and the city did that: Tax revenue in fiscal 2016 was $1.2 billion more than 2012. But his plan also called for the creation of 100,000 jobs in five years; the District added 42,400 jobs between 2012 and 2016, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Bowser’s goals are measured. To reach her $100 billion target, the private sector would need to grow at 3.4 percent annually. During the previous five years, the annual private-sector GDP growth rate was 4.2 percent.
The District will need to find jobs in the next five years for 1,313 residents of Wards 7 and 8 to reduce unemployment to below 10 percent in all eight wards. Bowser’s plan also calls for reducing to below 10 percent the rate of unemployment among high school graduates, currently 15.6 percent, and among African American residents, which is 13.2 percent.
“We must be more deliberate in our efforts to balance out the opportunities in the city,” said Oramenta Newsome, vice president for DC’s Local Initiatives Support Corp., a group targeting low-income neighborhoods, and a member of the plan’s advisory committee. Continued[+]...