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Slower Income Growth Offsets Employment Gains
Monday, February 16, 2004; Page E02
One of the most common ways to gauge how a region's economy is doing is by looking at the number of jobs it is creating. By that measure, the Washington area economy was doing better than that of any other large U.S. metropolitan area during 2003.
Those payroll numbers can mask a lot of things, though. A region can be adding low-paying jobs and shedding high-paying ones, but that information would be hard to glean from the Labor Department numbers. And if people are making vastly more money through, for example, stock dividends, it will not show up in the payroll numbers.
For that information, turn to the personal-income data tracked by the Commerce Department. The surprise: Despite signs of economic strength, income for residents of Maryland, Virginia and the District has been rising more slowly in the year ended Sept. 30 than in the nation as a whole, partly because of lower dividend, interest and rent income.
That is bad news for retailers, which depend on consumers having money in their pockets, and for state governments, which derive the bulk of their revenue from income taxes.
Over a two-year period, though, things looked a little better, as personal income in the District, Maryland and Virginia rose faster than the national average.
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