After recording its largest annual decrease on record, the Washington region’s economy will rebound next year and accelerate its growth in 2022, according to a new set of economic projections.
According to the projections, which were compiled by researchers at the Stephen S. Fuller Institute at George Mason University, the covid pandemic will result in a 3.3 percent contraction of the gross regional product in 2020. “The total decrease in jobs during the pandemic,” the researchers said Tuesday in their report, “was more than three times as large and occurred 6-8 times more quickly than during the 1990 and 2008 recessions.”
While the local economy is projected to expand by 2.4 percent next year, “the largest economic rebound will occur in 2022,” the researchers said, “after the vaccine is presumed to be available and in use.” The researchers continued, “During 2022, businesses and households are forecasted to fully catch-up on the forgone economic activities of the prior two years.”
Read the full report here.
Luke Mullins is a senior writer at Washingtonian magazine focusing on the people and institutions that control the city’s levers of power. He has written about the Koch Brothers’ attempt to take over The Cato Institute, David Gregory’s ouster as moderator of NBC’s Meet the Press, the collapse of Washington’s Metro system, and the conflict that split apart the founders of Politico.
