Fairfax County job edge stirs state leaders

Virginia county accounts for 45 percent of recent white-collar job growth in Washington metro area

‘‘Fairfax has had its turn and Montgomery County is next to grow in jobs in the biotechnology and biopharmaceuticals areas as those companies mature,” said Pradeep Ganguly, new director of the Montgomery County Department of Economic Development.

But the report revealed a huge geographic disparity in white-collar job growth. From 1990 to 2005, as many jobs shifted from the federal government to the private sector, Fairfax accounted for 45.4 percent of 229,000 new professional and business services jobs among 22 county and city jurisdictions in the Washington, D.C., area. The county also showed a 48.4 percent increase in total jobs.

A major part of the blame lies with Maryland lawmakers, said Kathleen Snyder, president of the Maryland Chamber of Commerce.

‘‘From the chamber point of view, we have serious competition for jobs in Virginia,” Snyder said.

Maryland lawmakers are not aware that ‘‘Fairfax has been much more aggressive in attracting tech companies, such as General Dynamics, Eli Lilly, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute,” Snyder said.

‘‘Legislation such as the so-called ‘‘Wal-Mart” medical insurance bill, clean cars mandate and minimum wage bill ‘‘signals to companies that may be expanding jobs [that] there is no certainty within the Maryland legislature they will be welcomed.”

What can Maryland officials do now?

‘‘For us to aggressively go out, we need to take it to a regional approach for funding and need to get the state involved and in foreign missions,” said Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett (D).

‘‘Fairfax County’s budget is bigger in this,” Leggett said. ‘‘We have just started to emphasize that aggressively in business international contacts. Pradeep will be very well-suited to that.”

Montgomery County will try to retain and partner its fundamental resources in health care and biotech, said Lester Coffey, chairman of the county’s chamber of commerce.

‘‘It is stronger in those areas than in Virginia and these are slower to develop,” Coffey said.

And many Maryland officials point to the benefits to come from the Pentagon’s Base Realignment and Closure process, which is expected to bring tens of thousands of jobs to Maryland and help ‘‘level the playing field” in the years to come.

Officials with the state Department of Business and Economic Development would not respond officially to the report.

Interim DBED Secretary Clarence Bishop could not be reached for comment. A department spokeswoman said simply: ‘‘The department has chosen not to respond to the report.”

‘Area’s persona hasclearly been redefined’

The report’s authors said their most striking finding was that Fairfax added more white-collar jobs than the combined total of the next four jurisdictions: the District, and Montgomery, Prince George’s and Loudoun counties.

The ‘‘Washington metropolitan area’s persona has clearly been redefined,” wrote economic analysts and co-authors Gerald Perrins and Diane Nilson.

The job growth, while fueled by the federal government, is in the private sector. For example, the report noted, federal jobs fell 32.8 percent in the District from 1990 to 2005.

‘‘The professional and business services industry, by contrast, grew rapidly during this time span and Fairfax County added these jobs at an astonishing pace [123 percent],” according to the report.

An underlying theme of the report, ‘‘Industry dynamics in the Washington, D.C. area: has a second job core emerged?” is that the entire Washington region is no longer dominated by federal jobs but is now a magnet for private industry.

Besides Fairfax, a number of counties had strong growth in white-collar jobs. Such jobs grew in Frederick County by 164.4 percent, faster than Fairfax’s 123 percent increase.

Factors ineconomic development

Aris Melissaratos, who resigned last month after nearly four years as secretary of Maryland’s Department of Business and Economic Development, was not surprised by Fairfax’s dominance in the report.

A major factor, he said: Northern Virginia spends more than Maryland on economic development.

‘‘Economic development activity over there has been much more aggressive,” Melissaratos said. ‘‘We have been more measured and go for managing balance growth. You have county executives over here that don’t want any more growth.”

Among those executives, he suggested, is Leggett, who won last year amid a slow-growth electoral tide.

‘‘What we have seen in Fairfax County is astounding by any measure,” Leggett said. ‘‘We are going to work more regionally with the others in P.G., Frederick, Howard and elsewhere in Maryland and we will get our lion’s share.”

Northern Virginia has had a ‘‘very positive regulatory climate for business,” Leggett said. ‘‘And what corresponded at the national level was the rise of technology and defense-related jobs.”

Northern Virginia also benefited from politicians such as Sen. John Warner, and former governors and senators Charles Robb and George Allen, who were all ‘‘very pro-defense contracts for Northern Virginia,” Leggett said.

Still, he said, ‘‘our standard is not to be measured by Fairfax. Our goal is a robust economy.”

‘‘Montgomery County is still struggling as to what degree we want a vibrant business community and what degree we want a good quality of life,” Coffey said.

Coffey said Fairfax County became such a job magnet by riding the explosive growth of information technology.

‘‘Fairfax has taken a more entrepreneurial approach in information technology and had more infrastructure in place,” he said. ‘‘If you are focused on IT, the [federal] budgets for that were a lot bigger for IT and for defense.

‘‘I’m not surprised that Fairfax is ahead of everyone, but I am a bit surprised that it is so far ahead of the rest of us,” he said. ‘‘An aspect not addressed in the report is that Montgomery County would be better able to weather an economic downturn or a drop in the federal budget than would Fairfax County.”

Tim Priest, executive director of the greater Washington initiative, part of the Greater Washington Board of Trade, said Fairfax County planners put more emphasis than other jurisdictions on attracting companies, assigning about 50 employees to the task.

Fairfax’s annual economic development budget of $6.4 million can’t be directly compared with Montgomery’s $9.6 million budget, Priest said, because of the differences in how the departments use personnel. Prince George’s County devotes about $1.4 million to economic development, said Priest who surveys economic development programs in the region’s jurisdictions.

He also pointed to other factors favoring Northern Virginia: Virginia has a more attractive tax structure than Maryland and has benefited from its location between the District and Dulles International Airport, one of the fastest growing airports in the country.

Dual focus in the region

This side of the Potomac, that side of the Potomac — it doesn’t really matter to most workers, said Gerald L. Gordon, president of the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority.

Having two major focal points for jobs, in Fairfax and the District, may ease commuting pressures, he said.

The region also benefits from having diverse employers with the public sector in Washington and the private employers in Fairfax, Gordon said.

Montgomery has not grown quite as fast as Fairfax, Gordon said, ‘‘but they’re already a world-class economy. They’re not playing the catch-up that some of the others are.”

Northern Virginia’s growth in IT companies and Montgomery’s lead in research sciences ‘‘actually makes the two counties compatible, since so much genomic research requires the computer services offered by businesses across the river,” he said.

BRAC coming

BRAC will help Maryland, some say.

‘‘Maryland is about to enter a burst of job growth through the BRAC with increases of 40,000 to 50,000 jobs,” said Gene Bracken, spokesman for the Greater Baltimore Committee. ‘‘Job growth will take place in those professional services that follow federal jobs.”

‘‘A significant percentage” of the BRAC jobs will be high-paying opportunities in IT, communications, research and engineering, Donald C. Fry, president of the Greater Baltimore Committee, told the Maryland House Environmental Matters Committee at a hearing Wednesday.

‘‘The influx of new jobs will propel Maryland as a national center for advanced defense communications and engineering and attract the best and the brightest in the field to Maryland,” Fry said.

KEY FINDINGS

From 1990 to 2005, the percentage of federal jobs in the Washington region fell from 16.4 percent to 12.2 percent of the workforce, while private sector white-collar jobs grew from 16.5 percent to 21.6 percent of the workforce.

Fairfax County, Va., accounted for 45.4 percent of white-collar job growth in the region.

As the range of the federal government’s activities has expanded, more of these specialized tasks, requiring the latest technologies, can best be supported by private-sector contractors.

The three largest counties outside the District — Fairfax, Montgomery and Prince George’s — attract a large number of commuting workers from other jurisdictions, from30 percent in Montgomery to 43 percent in Fairfax.

The report is available at www.bls.gov⁄opub⁄mlr⁄mlrhome.htm.