Down 79,800 jobs: A risk to the District of the Columbia’s superstar status

Executive Summary

The District of Columbia became a “superstar city” with an educated, well-paid, and engaged workforce. That superstar status is at risk. The city shed 79,800 jobs between February 2020 and December 2025. For young adults, entering a poor labor market can result in lower earnings, fewer employment opportunities, and greater difficulty building a career and starting a family.

Weak job growth since the pandemic creates two risks for the District. The more immediate risk is that a poor job market can scar young adults—reducing their earnings and limiting their job opportunities for years even after the job market rebounds. The contingent risk is that a lackluster job market threatens the District’s ability to retain and attract skilled workers.

For a city whose economic strength derives from its talented workforce, these risks cannot be ignored. No single policy can reliably produce sustained job growth. But a long-term commitment to workforce development and a responsive housing supply can create conditions that make job growth more likely and durable.

This report recommends three policies. First, to mitigate the adverse consequences of entering a poor labor market, the District should strengthen workforce pathways that connect education to employment, including apprenticeships and employer-driven training partnerships. Second, to support job creation, the District should use targeted economic development tools. Carefully designed tax incentives, when combined with workforce programs, can help anchor export-oriented industries—such as professional, scientific, and technical services, as well as technology. Research suggests that export-oriented firms tend to generate larger positive employment spillovers than locally oriented ones. Unlike locally oriented ones, export-oriented firms bring outside demand into the local economy. Third, to remain attractive over time, the District must address the cost pressures that make it difficult for workers to live in the city. In high-cost regions across the country, housing supply has become an important factor in employment growth. Expanding by-right development, reforming zoning, and increasing overall housing production can lower living costs and make the city more attractive to skilled workers.

With a comprehensive approach aligning education, targeted economic incentives, and housing policy, the District can remain what it has often been—a city where talent wants to come and stay.

Introduction: What makes a superstar workforce

What makes a “superstar” workforce and what puts that status at risk? This report examines these two questions for the District of Columbia.[1] A superstar workforce can be measured along three dimensions: educational attainment, wages, and labor force engagement. Superstar cities often score well on all three, but with inequalities, such as widening gaps in wages and labor force participation between workers with higher and lower levels of educational attainment. The District of Columbia is no exception.

The notion of a “superstar” city was introduced by economists Joseph Gyourko, Christopher Mayer, and Todd Sinai. In their framework, a city becomes a “superstar” when demand from higher-income households consistently exceeds a constrained housing supply — causing housing prices to increase substantially.[2] Since its introduction, the term has appeared in the work of popular political writers and reports by think tanks such as the Manhattan Institute and the Brookings Institution.[3]

This analysis proceeds in four sections. The first demonstrates that the District of Columbia qualifies as a superstar city. The second documents the District’s weak employment growth since the COVID-19 pandemic. The third explains how weak employment growth harms young adults entering the labor market and threatens the District’s ability to retain and attract skilled workers. The fourth proposes reforms to lessen the immediate harms of a weak labor market and strengthen the District’s long-term attractiveness.

Part 1: The District’s superstar workforce: educated, highly paid, and engaged

The District’s non-remote workforce is highly educated.[4] In 2024, nearly 38 percent of the District’s workforce held an advanced degree, while about 30 percent held a bachelor’s degree. The American Community Survey (ACS) measures place of work based on a worker’s physical location rather than the location of their employer.  Remote workers—hybrid or fully remote—employed by D.C.-based firms but working from home in Maryland or Virginia are counted as part of that state’s workforce, not the District’s.[5] Because remote workers tend to be more educated, excluding them likely understates the overall educational attainment of the District’s workforce.[6]

Over the last several decades, the District’s civilian population has become substantially more educated. In the late 1970s, advanced degree holders made up less than 10 percent of the District’s civilian population. In 2025, they accounted for 38 percent—a plurality of the population. The share of the population with a bachelor’s degree rose over the same period, while the share of those without a college degree—some college or only a high school diploma—declined.

The District’s educational profile highlights a key feature of superstar cities: their populations are often more educated than the nation as a whole.  In 2025, advanced degree holders account for just over 13 percent of the national civilian population, which is roughly one-third of the District’s share. By contrast, high school graduates made up the plurality of the national population at nearly 28 percent.

Higher educational attainment is linked to higher wages, while wages for less-educated workers have stagnated.

In the District, residents with bachelor’s or advanced degrees earn an hourly median wage premium that exceeds the national premium. The higher D.C. premium likely reflects both higher productivity and the elevated cost of living in a major U.S. city.

By contrast, hourly median wages have stagnated for those with a high school diploma or some college education. Although the District has a higher-than-average cost of living, the median hourly wages of residents with some college education or a high school degree are nearly identical to similarly educated workers nationwide. As a result, less-educated District residents earn similar wages but face higher prices — leaving them with reduced purchasing power.

This pattern aligns with broader economic research.  Research by economists Rebecca Diamond and Enrico Moretti suggests that high school graduates and high school dropouts have a lower standard of living in higher-cost cities than lower-cost ones, but college graduates do not face this tradeoff.[7] While the chart above pertains to District residents rather than all District workers, the populations are likely similar enough that resident wages serve as a reasonable approximation.

The upshot is that the District exhibits a hallmark of superstar cities: hourly median wages have increased for the highly educated, while flatlining for less-educated residents.

District and D.C. metro area residents with a B.A. or higher are highly engaged in the labor force.

While data and conceptual limitations preclude measuring labor force participation for the District’s workforce, available indicators suggest that the District’s workforce primarily comes from populations with high levels of labor force participation. Even though not all residents of the District or the metro area are employed in the District, labor force participation rates among D.C. residents and residents of the broader metro area are nevertheless instructive.

Both District residents and D.C. metro area residents have high labor force participation rates. The overall labor force participation rate of District residents–who are one source of the District’s workforce—has frequently exceeded that of the nation. In 2025, the District’s rate stood at 72.5 percent—about ten percentage points higher than the national rate. Similarly, the labor force participation rate of D.C. metro area residents–who are another source of the District’s workforce—paints a similar picture. In 2024, the metro area’s labor force participation rate was a little more than 8 percentage points above the national rate. [8]

Labor force participation rates in the District vary substantially by educational attainment. Since 1980, labor force participation rates among residents with a bachelor’s or advanced degree have generally remained high and stable. Meanwhile, rates for District residents without a college degree have generally declined.

As with hourly median wage trends, labor force participation patterns by educational attainment in the District differ from the nation. Since 1980, national participation rates have declined across all education levels. In 2025, labor force participation was higher nationwide than in the District among individuals with some college education, a high school diploma, or less than a high school education. Conversely, rates were higher in the District for those with bachelor’s or advanced degrees.

Similar to the District, the highly educated residents of the D.C. metro area—whether they hold a bachelor’s degree or an advanced degree—have had consistently high labor force participation rates. Participation gaps emerge, however, among D.C. metro area residents with less than a bachelor’s degree. For example, in 2024, the labor force participation gap between metro area residents with a high school degree and those with less than a high school degree was almost 16 percentage points.

While the headline numbers mask a divide between residents with higher and lower levels of educational attainment, overall, the strong labor force participation rates in the District and the broader D.C. region reflect high levels of engagement.

Part 2: The District has experienced weak job growth since the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, despite the District’s superstar workforce, job growth in the city since the COVID-19 pandemic has been sluggish.

Five years after the pandemic, the District’s nonfarm employment remains about 10 percent below its pre-pandemic peak. Put differently, the District lost 79,800 jobs between February 2020 and December 2025.[9] By contrast, national nonfarm employment has rebounded and remains 4 percent above its pre-pandemic level.

Private employment trends tell a similar story. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, private employment growth in the District has lagged both the nation and the broader D.C. metro area. In December 2025, private employment in the District remained 9 percent below its pre-pandemic level.

Employment growth has been weak across various sectors in the District.

Since the pandemic, weak job growth has affected multiple sectors of the District’s economy. Federal government employment is 13.3 percent below its February 2020 level — but this represents only one part of a broader problem. The professional and business services sector, for instance, remains 7.5 percent below its pre-pandemic level. These trends highlight that the employment shortfall is not confined to any single sector. It is a feature of the District’s local labor market.[10]

Metro area nonfarm employment trends provide context for the District’s employment struggles. While nonfarm employment growth in the Washington, D.C. metro area has outperformed the District, nonfarm employment growth was tepid compared to the D.C. metro area’s history. The sluggish recovery after the COVID-19 pandemic echoes the anemic growth after the July 1990 recession.[11]

The D.C. metro area is not alone. Higher-cost metro areas have generally underperformed their lower-cost peers in employment growth since the pandemic.[12]  Among the selected higher-cost metro areas, the D.C. region ranks in the bottom half for nonfarm employment growth. The worst-performing higher-cost metro area was San Francisco, where nonfarm employment is 3.9 percent below its February 2020 level.  By comparison, Riverside, the best-performing higher-cost metro area, remains 8.5 percent above its pre-pandemic peak.

While Riverside has outperformed its high-cost peers, its performance is only somewhat better than that of the worst-performing lower-cost metro area, Atlanta (7.3 percent). The best-performing lower-cost metro area – Austin—sits nearly 23 percent above its pre-pandemic level.

Part 3: Risks posed by the District’s anemic labor market: scarring of young adults and skilled out-migration.

If the District’s local job market continues to substantially underperform, two risks emerge: the scarring of young adults entering the labor market, and the out-migration of skilled workers. The scarring of young adults is the more immediate risk, while skilled out-migration is the more contingent risk.

A weak job market may negatively affect or “scar” young adults entering the labor market.[13] In the February 2026 revenue estimate letter, the District’s Chief Financial Officer warned that the District’s economy “is now expected to enter a moderate recession in FY 2026, with real GDP projected to contract by 2.9 percent, then begin expanding in FY 2027 and return to trend growth in FY 2028 and FY 2029.” Economic research suggests that young adults who face a recessionary labor market may experience employment losses and lower earnings for at least a decade, as well as reduced marriage rates, fewer children, and worse health outcomes in middle age.[14]

The employment losses associated with a recessionary labor market do not fall evenly on demographic groups. National research suggests that workers with lower levels of educational attainment, Hispanic and black workers, young workers, and men are more adversely affected than other demographic groups. The pattern has held across recessions going back to the late 1970s. While the 2008 crisis is a striking case, it is not unique in terms of who it most affected.[15]

A persistently weak labor market may also prompt people to leave the District for other places in the United States. In contrast to the 2010s, the District has not experienced positive domestic migration since the pandemic, and out-migration increased in 2025 compared to 2024.[16] Job market conditions are one of several factors that can drive out-migration, but prolonged weak job growth could make reversing the trend more difficult.

Out-migration also threatens to erode the District’s skilled labor force. Research by economist Timothy J. Bartik has found that in distressed labor markets, typically areas that have a low prime-age employment-to-population ratio, the individuals most likely to leave are skilled and entrepreneurial younger people—the workers who are crucial for economic vitality in the District.[17] But Bartik’s measure should not be taken as a bright line — skilled workers may leave before a technical definition of labor market distress is met.

The out-migration of skilled workers is not a foregone conclusion. Recent national research suggests that geographic mobility in the U.S. has declined and that migration from weak to strong labor markets has become less likely.[18] Even if skilled workers stay put, the more immediate risk remains the scarring of young adults entering the labor market, whose early career setbacks may have long-term consequences at the individual and societal levels. 

Part 4: The policy path forward: talent, affordability, and competitiveness.

The District’s response to a weak job market should focus on two interconnected issues: mitigating the adverse consequences for young people entering the workforce and restoring the city’s attractiveness for workers, residents, and employers, over time. A grounded understanding of what is feasible helps guard against well-intentioned policies that are ultimately ineffective and costly.  While targeted interventions can help at the margin, fostering the conditions that maximize the chances for durable job growth will likely take time. Fostering such conditions requires a comprehensive approach that integrates education, targeted economic incentives, and housing policy.

First, the District can take steps to reduce the long-term scarring associated with entering a weak job market.  Policies that keep young people connected to school or work—through apprenticeships and work-based learning— can help shield them from the worst of the scarring effects.[19] Several existing District initiatives point the way forward. Programs that expand career and technical education, and employer-guided training help students build skills while postponing entry into a difficult job market.[20]

The District’s Compact 2043 is a promising citywide effort to align education and workforce systems. Its objective is to guide students through a structured pipeline—from middle to high school, to postsecondary education or training, and ultimately to employment—while providing exposure to work opportunities along the way.  The underlying premise is well-grounded: smoother school-to-work transitions lead to better outcomes for young people.

While education policy is vitally important, it is not sufficient. Without coordinated efforts on economic incentives and housing costs, the city may not maximize the likelihood of durable job growth.

Well-designed tax incentives—particularly for export-oriented firms—could help increase local employment. Export-oriented firms hire locally and sell their goods or services outside the region. In doing so, these firms create demand that leads to additional jobs in the area. Research by economist Timothy Bartik has found that tax incentives for export-oriented sectors tend to have larger, positive local employment spillover effects than for purely local industries.  These incentives will tend to be more effective in places where labor markets are distressed.[21] Bartik elsewhere notes that “multipliers also may be higher in some high-tech industries if the area already has some local jobs in that high-tech industry, which leads to some synergy benefits for the existing high-tech sector.”[22] Given this, carefully designed incentives may help anchor or expand sectors in the District such as professional, scientific, and technical services, as well as emerging areas in cybersecurity and technology.

Lastly, the District should expand its housing supply. Economic research suggests that, at the metro area level, a restricted housing supply is associated with reduced employment growth.[23] As three economists have written: “firms in a region cannot expand employment without new homes to house new workers.”[24] Previous D.C. Policy Center research found that, in 2022, 64 percent of essential workers in the District resided outside the city. This statistic provides indirect evidence that high housing prices in the District may constrain prospective workers’ ability to take jobs in the city.[25]

Local policy can make progress on lowering housing costs by changing how housing is approved and built. One lever is expanding by-right development—especially in high-opportunity, transit-rich neighborhoods—so that new housing can be approved and built without unnecessary discretionary reviews that increase delays, costs, and uncertainty. Research from the American Enterprise Institute suggests that expanding by-right development can boost an area’s housing supply by 1 to 2.5 percent annually.[26] 

Another lever is zoning reforms. According to research by economists Leah Brooks and Jenny Schuetz, between 2000 and 2020, a lot of the new housing in the District resulted from rezoning what used to be non-residential land. As Brooks and Schuetz point out, these kinds of zoning reforms will tend to face less resistance because non-residential areas tend to have fewer existing homeowners. As a result, the pool of homeowners who may object to new housing developments is also smaller.[27]

Taken together, these recommendations reflect the broader lesson that no one policy can produce sustained job growth. Workforce programs help people connect to job opportunities. Incentives may influence hiring decisions at the margin. Housing policy shapes whether workers and firms can stay and grow. When these areas of policy reinforce one another, the conditions for sustained growth become more likely.

Conclusion

The District’s superstar workforce — educated, well-paid, and engaged — is an asset worth vigorously protecting. But a persistently weak labor market puts this asset at risk. While these policies alone will not return employment to its pre-pandemic level, keeping young people engaged in school and connected to work, incentivizing export-oriented businesses, and expanding the housing supply can strengthen the foundations that make the District an attractive place to work, build a career, and raise a family. The District has already made progress in building its education system and expanding workforce pathways.  The next step is to connect these efforts to a fuller economic strategy — one that makes it easier to hire and easier for talent to stay in the city.

Data notes:

• Business cycle dates can be found here: “US Business Cycle Expansions and Contractions,” NBER.
• One-year American Community Survey (ACS) data can be accessed via IPUMS USA, University of Minnesota. All 1-year ACS data used in this report was accessed via IPUMS USA.
• Employment data can be accessed via FRED.
• The employment data used for this report includes the revised employment estimates for December 2025. In general, the revisions lowered the preliminary employment estimates.
• Economic Policy Institute’s State of Working America Data Library can be accessed here.

[1] In this report, the term “superstar” is used descriptively based on measurable labor market characteristics, not as a term of normative evaluation.

[2] “Why Do House Prices Rise Faster in Some Cities?” The Digest, NBER, March 1, 2007; Joseph Gyourko, Christopher Mayer, and Todd Sinai, “Superstar Cities,” American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 5, no. 4 (November 2013): 167–199.

[3] Matthew Yglesias, “The future of the superstar city,” The Slow Boring, January 29, 2021; Mark Muro and Yang You, “Superstars, rising stars, and the rest: Pandemic trends and shifts in the geography of tech” Brookings, March 8, 2022; Aaron Renn, “SCALING UP: How Superstar Cities Can Grow to New Heights,” Manhattan Institute, January 2020. Commonly cited superstar metro areas include San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Seattle, and Washington, D.C.

[4] One limitation of this workforce section is that it is difficult to directly measure the characteristics of the District’s full employer-based workforce—that is, all workers employed by firms located in the District of Columbia. Resident-based economic measures are imperfect because not all D.C. residents work for firms located in the District. Meanwhile, worker-centric measures capture those who physically work in the District. While American Community Survey (ACS) data can be used to profile workers by their  reported place of work, including those who commute into the District, ACS data does not capture the profile of workers who work remotely but are employed by firms located in the District.  Any analysis of D.C.’s workforce faces this limitation. A complete D.C. workforce dataset would have information on where people live, where they physically work, and the location of their employer. To this author’s knowledge, no currently available dataset captures all three dimensions.

[5] Yesim Sayin and Bailey McConnell, “Worker sprawl in the Washington metropolitan area: Is D.C. still the region’s job hub?,” D.C. Policy Center, May 1, 2023.

[6] Daniel Burge, “Chart of the week: Working from home in the District is concentrated among D.C. residents with a BA or higher” D.C. Policy Center, October 10, 2025; Adam G. Levin, “Economic Development Implications of Remote Work in the Post-Pandemic Environment” Congressional Research Service (CRS), May 8, 2025.

[7] Krysten Crawford, “Expensive ‘Superstar’ Cities Are Squeezing Out Many Americans,” Insights by Stanford Business, December 8, 2021; Rebecca Diamond and Enrico Moretti, “Where is Standard of Living the Highest? Local Prices and the Geography of Consumption,” Working Paper No. 3997, Graduate School of Stanford Business, December 2021.

[8] The D.C. metro area’s labor force participation rate was 71.02 percent in 2024.  The author calculated this rate using IPUMS USA 1-year ACS data. It is also worth noting that the labor force participation rate of non-native D.C. residents has been consistently higher than native D.C. residents. For IPUMS ACS data see, Steven Ruggles, Sarah Flood, Matthew Sobek, Daniel Backman, Grace Cooper, Julia A. Rivera Drew, Stephanie Richards, Renae Rodgers, Jonathan Schroeder, and Kari C.W. Williams. IPUMS USA: Version 16.0 [dataset]. Minneapolis, MN: IPUMS, 2025. https://doi.org/10.18128/D010.V16.0; For more on labor force participation, see Daniel Burge, “Labor force participation in the District of Columbia: Six key facts you need to know,” D.C. Policy Center, December 5, 2024.

[9] Daniel Burge, Hannah Mason, and Chelsea Coffin, “Chart of the week: D.C.’s sluggish job market—65,600 jobs still lost nearly six years after the pandemic—threatens opportunities for the city’s young people,” D.C. Policy Center, February 19, 2026; February 2020 is the peak month before the recession associated with COVID-19. The peak month is the last month before economic activity begins to decline. See “US Business Cycle Expansions and Contractions,” NBER.

[10] Daniel Burge, Hannah Mason, and Chelsea Coffin, “Chart of the week: D.C.’s sluggish job market—65,600 jobs still lost nearly six years after the pandemic—threatens opportunities for the city’s young people,” D.C. Policy Center, February 19, 2026; February 2020 is the peak month before the recession associated with COVID-19. The peak month is the last month before economic activity begins to decline. See “US Business Cycle Expansions and Contractions,” NBER.

[11]Daniel Burge and Yesim Sayin, “Is the District of Columbia still competitive?” D.C. Policy Center, December 4, 2025. February 2020 is the peak month before the recession associated with COVID-19. The peak month is the last month before economic activity begins to decline. See “US Business Cycle Expansions and Contractions,” NBER.

[12] The selection of higher- and lower-cost metro areas follows Bailey McConnell, “What do migration and labor force trends tell us about D.C. and other large, high-cost metro areas?,” D.C. Policy Center, October 5, 2022. McConnell borrowed from Stephen Whitaker, “Migrants from High-Cost, Large Metro Areas during the COVID-19 Pandemic, Their Destinations, and How Many Could Follow,” Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, March 25, 2021.

[13] Daniel Burge, Hannah Mason, and Chelsea Coffin, “Chart of the week: D.C.’s sluggish job market—65,600 jobs still lost nearly six years after the pandemic—threatens opportunities for the city’s young people,” D.C. Policy Center, February 19, 2026

[14]“Life-Cycle Impacts of Graduating in a Recession,” The Reporter, NBER, March 31, 2023; Hannes Schwandt and Till M. von Wachter, “Socio-Economic Decline and Death: The Life-Cycle Impacts of Recessions for Labor Market Entrants” NBER Working Paper # 26638, January 2020. In the words of Hannes Schwandt and Till M. von Wachter, “entering the labor market in a downturn affects the entire life-cycle trajectories of economic, family, and health outcomes until age 50. Besides having lower long-term earnings, higher rates of disability, fewer children, fewer marriages, and lower-income spouses, in middle age unlucky entrants also have higher mortality due to lung, liver, and heart disease.”

[15]“Which Groups Suffer Most in the Labor Market During Recessions?” The Digest, NBER, July 1, 2012; Hilary W. Hoynes, Douglas L. Miller & Jessamyn Schaller, “Who Suffers During Recessions?” NBER Working Paper # 17951, March 2012.  

[16] Daniel Burge, “Chart of the week: D.C.’s population growth slowed in 2025—and key trends are concerning.” D.C. Policy Center, January 30, 2026.

[17]Timothy J. Bartik, “Abundance Strategies Should Promote Abundant Jobs in Distressed Places Distressed Places,” Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, September 2, 2025, all but esp. p. 4-5, 14. The District would likely not count as distressed.

[18] John Bailey Jones, Yue Li, and Urvi Neelakantan, “Why Is Geographic Mobility Declining?” Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, Economic Brief No 25-19, May 2025; Ning Jia, Raven Molloy, Christopher Smith, and Abigail Wozniak, “The Economics of Internal Migration: Advances and Policy Questions” Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2022-003. Washington: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, https://doi.org/10.17016/FEDS.2022.003, all but esp. p. 1.

[19] Daniel Burge, Hannah Mason, and Chelsea Coffin, “Chart of the week: D.C.’s sluggish job market—65,600 jobs still lost nearly six years after the pandemic—threatens opportunities for the city’s young people,” D.C. Policy Center, February 19, 2026; Hannes Schwandt and Till M. von Wachter, “Socio-Economic Decline and Death: The Life Cycle Impacts of Recessions for Labor Market Entrants,” NBER Working Paper # 26638, January 2020. The authors note that “employment or education programs assisting unlucky graduates to avoid entering the labor market in a recession may be the most promising for avoiding the destabilizing effects of unlucky early labor market entry.” (p. 28).

[20] Chelsea Coffin and Hannah Mason, “Building career assets for lifelong success,” D.C. Policy Center, November 13, 2024.   

[21] Timothy J. Bartik, “Bringing Jobs to People: Improving Local Economic Development Policies” The Aspen Institute: Economic Strategy Group, August 2020. See also, Yesim Sayin, “The District’s business incentives should target its comparative advantages,” D.C. Policy Center, September 15, 2021. 

[22]Timothy J. Bartik, “What standards make sense for economic development tax incentives?” Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, April 4, 2024.

[23]Raven E. Saks, “Job Creation and Housing Construction: Constraints on Metropolitan Area Employment Growth,” 2005-49, Finance and Economics Discussion Series Divisions of Research & Statistics and Monetary Affairs, Federal Reserve Board, Washington, D.C. 

[24] Edward L. Glaeser, Joseph Gyourko, and Raven E. Saks, “Urban Growth and Housing Supply,” NBER # Working Paper 11097, January 2005, p. 23.

[25]Emilia Calma and Yesim Sayin, “Priced out: Where can D.C.’s essential workers afford to live?,” D.C. Policy Center, July 18, 2024.

[26] Daniel Burge and Yesim Sayin, “Is the District of Columbia still competitive?” D.C. Policy Center, December 4, 2025; Alana Baker, Tobias Peter, Edward Pinto, and Joseph Tracy, “A Critique of the Urban Institute’s Panel Study on Land Use Reforms to Impact Housing Supply: Evidence of Severe Methodological Gaps,” American Enterprise Institute (AEI) Economics Working Paper 2025-07, October 2025, all but esp. p. 1, 29.

[27]Leah Brooks and Jenny Schuetz, “Where 20 years of new housing was built in Washington, DC—and where it wasn’t,” Brookings, September 18, 2023.