DC struggles to retain millennial entrepreneurs

The greater Washington region has struggled to retain the flood of millennials and young entrepreneurs who moved to D.C. during the Obama administration, said Bloomberg’s U.S. economy reporter.

Michelle Jamrisko said Washington’s economy is generally counter-cyclical: “whatever’s going on in the national economy, D.C. is usually a little bit of the opposite.” At the moment, both the national and local economies are stable, but change is on the horizon.

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“This kind of transition from being very reliant on those federal sectors jobs, to kind of trying to wean itself off,” Jamrisko said. In the wake of this, regional businesses are struggling to create diverse, high-value jobs to employ and attract talent.

Millennials are leaving D.C. and moving to “cooler cities,” Jamrisko said. Meanwhile, efforts to pull outside entrepreneurs into D.C. have also been slow.

“It’s hard to find people who are really excited to come to this region for entrepreneurial reasons… D.C. isn’t really thought of as that city that is the next Silicon Valley,” Jamrisko told What’s Working in Washington. She cited a number of regulations that businesses don’t find particularly palatable.

However, Jamrisko sees the region as one where entrepreneurs come to make deep impacts in society, not just to make money.

“I think a lot of people do see D.C. as an area where your voice is heard at an amplified level,” she said. However, thanks to some regulations, “even if the city is in line, and even if the region is in line with the idea, it’s very hard to get all those people on the same page.”

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