"We don't make anything here"

There is one city that is doing very well in this deep and long recession that we have been going through.  It is one of the few places that young people can get a job.

That of course would be Washington, D.C.

Bubble on the Potomac

Andrew Ferguson, Time Magazine, 22 May 2012 (hat tip: MR)

The riches reflect a regional economy as resilient—and as strange—as any in the world. "We don’t make anything here," Fuller says simply. Washington is one of the few metropolitan areas in the country that have no significant manufacturing sector, placing it alongside Atlantic City, N.J.; Myrtle Beach, S.C.; Cape Cod, Massachusetts; and Ocean City, N.J. "There isn’t any single major industry," says Jim Dinegar, president of the Greater Washington Board of Trade. "We’re just very diverse."...

Aside from its wealth, the single defining feature of über-Washington is its youth. Most of the people who have moved to Washington since 2006 have been under 35; the region has the highest percentage of 25-to-34-year-olds in the U.S. "We’re a mecca for young people," Fuller says. One recent arrival says word has gotten out to new graduates that Washington is where the work is. "It’s a place where a liberal-arts major can still get a job," she says, "because you don’t need a particular skill."

Note that it is not all easy.  The employment track for the young includes a lot of working for free and than maybe getting an entry level position at very low wages.  These are not options for most middle class students coming out of college with a huge amount of debt, or low income students who received a lot in the way of scholorships, but have no family funding to support them while they work for free.  These are positions for at the very least the upper middle class: the 20 or 10% if not necessarily the 1%.

I don't have a problem with liberal arts majors.  They are often the most creative students coming out of a degreed program.  That our economy cannot find a place for our most creative thoughtful students is highly problematic.  That they would use their creativity within the confines of an enormous self-feeding political-beaurocratid establishment is particularly alarming.