"The region did experience a shorter, shallower recession than San Jose," said Sara Kline, a Washington analyst at Moody's Analytics Inc. in West Chester, Pennsylvania. "The federal government stepped in to take efforts to dampen the recession. It was focused to some extent in the D.C. area as well, given the presence of federal workers there and contractors. That insulated it from more of a downturn."
Federal government spending for programs excluding Social Security and Medicare in fiscal year 2011, which ended on Sept. 30, rose to $2.38 trillion from $2.3 trillion the previous year.
Last year Washington also had the most lawyers per capita in the U.S. compared with the 50 states, with one for every 12 city residents, according to figures from the American Bar Association and the Census Bureau. In New York State the figure was one out of every 123 residents, while in California the ratio was one in 243.
Associate attorneys in the Washington area who have worked between one and eight years had a median salary of $186,250, compared with the national median for their peers of $123,521, according to a survey by the Washington-based National Association for Law Placement.
Lobbyists play a prominent role in the Washington economy. In 2010 there were 12,964 registered lobbyists, with most working in or around the nation's capital, according to figures compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington- based research group that tracks political spending. Spending on lobbying efforts reached a record $3.51 billion last year, up from $3.49 billion in 2009.
The Washington suburbs are also home to government contractors such as Bethesda, Maryland-based Lockheed Martin Corp., the world's largest defense company, and General Dynamics Corp., the Falls Church, Virginia-based maker of Abrams tanks and Gulfstream business jets.
With about 5.6 million residents, the Washington region has an aggregate household income of about $221.4 billion. The San Jose area has about 1.8 million people and income of $67 billion, according to census figures gathered from the American Community Survey. The annual survey polls about 3 million American households to provide annual economic, demographic, social and housing characteristics for the nation.
The Brownsville-Harlingen metro area in southeast Texas along the border with Mexico had the lowest median household income last year at $31,736.
Such income inequality is on display in Washington as well. In the District of Columbia, almost 11 percent of the city's population qualifies as "very poor," meaning they make less than half the poverty rate, or about $11,025 a year for a family of four and $5,415 for a single person. The same figure for San Jose is about 6 percent, according to census figures.
"Even though we've got this very healthy group of government employees and contractors, there's still a lot of people left behind," said Douglas Besharov, a professor at the University of Maryland's School of Public Policy.