D.C. mayor looks to make good on 2010 election campaign promise: More jobs

Mayor Vincent C. Gray knows the number, precisely.

“Three thousand, nine hundred and sixty-four,” he ticks off, on a Saturday morning as he tours a Southeast elementary school. “I check the numbers daily.”

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That would be the number of D.C. residents his administration has helped find jobs. It’s the yardstick by which Gray is measuring himself as he endeavors to make good on the cornerstone promise of his 2010 election campaign.

“This lack of jobs in the District is a ticking time bomb that affects us all,” said one piece of campaign literature.

Since being elected, Gray (D) has overhauled the city’s employment services department and rolled out a mix of long- and short-term initiatives aimed at getting residents to work in a city that spent more than 2¹ / ₂ years with unemployment at more than 10 percent.

It’s hard to quantify how Gray’s efforts have made a difference, but the citywide unemployment rate stands at 8.9 percent, the lowest level in three years and only 0.6 points above the national rate. Compared with a year ago, there are about 18,400 more employed city residents, according to District statistics.

Gray said he is gratified by the progress. “I also recognize we have some distance to travel,” he quickly added.

The District has grown its job base, adding 6,600 jobs in the past year, according to figures from the city’s chief financial officer. But fewer than one in three of the city’s 736,000 jobs are held by a city resident.

City statistics still peg unemployment in Ward 8 as exceeding 20 percent. Neighboring Ward 7, the other ward east of the Anacostia River, stands at 15 percent. Those wards also voted most heavily for Gray in 2010.

In Ward 3, the city’s most affluent, unemployment is 2.3 percent.

“It’s the disparities,” said Martha Ross, a Brookings Institution fellow who has studied the city’s programs for the unemployed. “Parts of the city are doing pretty well and parts are still really, really struggling. . . . The city looks pretty good compared to other cities on a lot of markers about job growth and in some neighborhoods, that’s just not the case.”

The improving numbers, she added, are “really good signs, but they’re fragile.”

These days, ask Gray about his proudest accomplishments and he will note the dip in unemployment in those most troubled areas. Ward 8 is down to 22.5 percent, from 26.3 percent unemployment a year ago. In that same period, Ward 7 has gone from 17.8 percent joblessness to 15 percent, while Ward 5 has improved from 14.6 percent to 12.2.

Promises of jobs and economic development can be among the hardest for a government executive to deliver on. With city budgets tight, stimulative spending is not in the mayoral toolbox, and it’s up to Gray to beg, beseech and cajole private employers into hiring city residents.

The Gray administration’s marquee jobs initiative is called One City, One Hire — modeled after a Atlanta program that urged private employers to make at least one new hire a year. In the District, the challenge is less about getting companies to hire than getting them to hire city residents over suburban dwellers.