What’s In It For You (and me)?

Presidential transitions have an eventual impact on most of us, on what we do and where we live. If that happens to be in the Washington area, it’s usually sooner rather than later.

Compared to most of the rest of the country, the metro Washington area is, economically, the land of milk and honey. Look at the large number of luxury cars, the SUVs, the McMansions. A lot of people here (including me) live inside a very comfortable bubble.

The Baltimore-Washington metro complex has more than 400,000 federal civil servants. This is not Detroit or Toledo. Those jobs aren’t going to go away. We have a huge number of uniformed military people here – perhaps 90,000 – who rotate in and out, but whose paid slots are always filled by someone else.

We have high tech IT corridors in the Virginia suburbs and a biotech corridor in the Maryland suburbs. The National Institutes of Health, the Pentagon, the IRS are among the largest employers here. The intelligence community (CIA, DIA, NSA, etc.) is a big player here: Numbers unknown, but huge!

Housing prices here are among the highest in the nation. Especially houses and apartments inside the beltway which takes in a lot of real estate. Prices have slipped here, but probably not as badly as where you are – especially if you are in California, Nevada or Florida.

When you go into a Starbuck’s in the DC area, they hand you a job application. Same for many other stores and businesses. Finding a job here is easier than most places.

That said…

We’re about to enter a period of employment-economic turbulence thanks to the change in administrations. It would have happened no matter who was elected, but it will almost certainly be more drastic (to which some would say hooray) than previous transitions. President-elect Barack Obama comes out of Chicago as a community organizer. His likely chief-of-staff, Rahm Emanuel, does too. Chicago politicians, no matter their priorities and world vision, also pay a lot of attention to people. As in who gets what job.

As many as 10,000 federal jobs, on Capitol Hill and those now held by Bush administration appointees, are probably in play. Congressional staffers in the House will have until the inauguration (January 20, 2009) to clear out. Senate staffers whose bosses lost or retired will have a little bit longer. But not much.

Most political appointees, Schedule Cs and the like, will be out of work as soon as they can be replaced. Political appointees to the Senior Executive Service and in other cabinet jobs must observe a getting-to-know-you grace period before they can start chopping heads.

Real estate brokers here see this as, maybe, a good thing. Lots of houses will be being sold at low (for us) prices. Lots of outsiders, who’ve heard about Washington’s nasty rush hours (second only to LA,) may want to buy or rent inside the beltway.

Over the next few weeks we’ll all be reading and hearing pundits tell us what the new administration will mean. How it will work. Starting with its impact on the federal government itself. It happens with every transition. Most of them, if history is any guide, will turn out to be slightly-wrong to very-wrong.

So whether your candidate won or lost, take a deep breath.

This is not a drill.

Nearly Useless Factoid

From the New York Times comes word that biting your nails will make them grow faster.

To reach me: mcausey@federalnewsradio.com

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