The ONLY reason the cost of living in the DC Metro area is as high as it is...is because of highly paid Federal employees.
no, usually cost of living is commensurate with population and employment opportunity density.
its your typical economics equation of supply and demand.
If you plop 500k jobs down in a 3 mile area the surrounding apartments and homes value and rental pricing is going to go through the roof due to demand. It doesn’t even initially matter how well paying those jobs are. The demand on the housing is going to drive prices up, and the prices of the housing is going to dictate the salaries that the jobs pay over a longer period of time.
You’ve seen fast food restaurants in NYC no doubt. Do you think those fast food places pay the same wages as the ones in Topeka or Boise? The wages in NYC are high because no one is going to commute for 30-60 minutes for a job that pays 10 bucks an hour, and no one making 10 bucks an hour can afford to get an apartment close enough to walk to the fast food place to work. Wages are driven up because of the cost of living, but the cost of living is driven up because of demand. Demand is driven up due to the jobs that are available. its all interlinked, but the wages are not just arbitrarily set to a high level because its DC.
The DC metro area also has a ridiculous number of law firms (lobbyists), federal contractors of every imaginable kind, and of course all the service industries needed for the huge population.
There is at least one federal contractor for every federal employee. In DC they are called the “shadow government”.
Even folks who have nothing to do with the government depend on people who do work for the government or federal contractors to be their customers.
The DC metro area also has a ridiculous number of law firms (lobbyists), federal contractors of every imaginable kind, and of course all the service industries needed for the huge population.
There is at least one federal contractor for every federal employee. In DC they are called the “shadow government”.
Even folks who have nothing to do with the government depend on people who do work for the government or federal contractors to be their customers.