Employment Slump Perils Area's Economic Stability: Employment Slump ...
Thousands of professional, clerical and highly skilled blue-collar workers pushed out on the streets by federal job cutbacks, the ailing housing industry, the closing of The Washington Star and other such events have produced an unprecedented employ-Û_ ment slump for the Washington area that threatens its reputation as a recession-proof town.</br></br>In an area fabled for economic stability regardless of the trends elsewhere, jobs have been swept away to a degree that alarms some local business leaders and economists. Once-secure workers, who built financial obligations around that security, now scramble foråÈthe remaining jobs.</br></br>for example, where most workers file for unemployment because of higher benefits, the August unemployment rate was 10 percent ÛÓ a 35-percent jump from the 7.4-percent rate a year before.</br></br>By the end of the year more than 4,000 federal jobs here will have disappeared through reductions in force. Another 1,400 jobs disappeared when The Star folded in August. And at least 370 striking air traffic controllers in the area have lost their jobs and other workers have been caught in airline layoffs resulting from the strike.</br></br>Major consulting firms and other companies are not getting the government contracts they once relied on, and the struggling housing market has had a serious impact on construction workers, See IMPACT, A10, Col. 1 real estate brokers and building material suppliers, according to area employment offices. These problems, coupled with a record number of business bankruptcies, have accounted in part for the growing ranks of the jobless.