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| Greg Chmura , Chris Chmura

Amazon’s Impact in Crystal City, Virginia

Amazon announced plans for a new corporate headquarters in September 2017, setting off a frenzy of bids (238 proposals) as well as speculation as to which city would win the competition. On November 13, 2018, it became official, Crystal City, Virginia—just south of downtown Washington D.C. and the location of Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport—would become home to a new headquarters for Amazon, splitting the overall planned expansion with New York City. Chmura Economics & Analytics was honored to perform the economic impact analysis for the Crystal City expansion on behalf of the Virginia Chamber Foundation. This impact analysis included a study of the job, spending, and tax effects projected to result from Amazon’s new headquarters in Northern Virginia.

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| Chris Chmura

Economic Impact: Good reasons for retail sales to be strong for this year's holiday shopping season

By the appearance inside many stores at malls and shopping centers, it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. This is the time of year that represents about 20 percent of the retail industry's total sales. And based on recent announcements by some national retailers of plans to hire more seasonal workers than last year, it looks like the chains are optimistic about the upcoming holiday shopping season. And there is good reason for that optimism.

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| Patrick Clapp

Wanted: Anthropology Majors

Liberal arts degrees often get a bad reputation because the number of job openings requiring the specific curriculum is relatively low. It can be hard to make a connection between some programs like music, art, or anthropology and occupations that are in high demand. Anthropology, in particular, is often high on the lists of worst college majors for a career.

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| Patrick Clapp

Carve Your Pumpkin With Labor Market Data

With Halloween just around the corner, it’s time to update our Chernoff jack-o’-lanterns. Chernoff faces are designed to display multiple variables as facial expressions, but we’ve carved ours with labor data from JobsEQ.