Mike Maciag - D.C. Policy Center

Mike enjoys telling stories with data. Previously, he crunched numbers and wrote for Governing magazine on a variety of policy issues relating to state and local governments. He also managed the magazine’s data portal of charts, maps and other visualizations.

Before joining Governing, Mike was a reporter at the Erie (Pa.) Times-News, where he worked on data journalism projects and covered the morning police beat. His prior experience includes stops in Atlanta, Dayton, Ohio, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and Peoria, Ill.

He holds a master’s degree in public administration from George Mason University and undergraduate degrees in journalism and computer science from the University of Dayton. Follow him on Twitter at @mikemaciag.

D.C. Policy Center contributors are independent writers, and we gladly encourage the expression of a variety of perspectives. The views of our contributors, published here or elsewhere, do not reflect the views of the D.C. Policy Center.

Written By Mike Maciag

Articles | Demographics | Regional Dynamics

D.C. is hard to count. Here’s where officials could target efforts for the 2020 Census.

There’s a lot riding on the 2020 Census. The federal government uses census data to allocate more than $6 billion in annual funding to the District of Columbia for Medicaid, schools, food assistance and dozens of other programs. Across the Washington metropolitan area, the same population totals and decennial count results further…

November 4, 2019 | Mike Maciag

Articles | Economy | Workforce

Trends in federal employment in D.C.

The evolving federal workforce and its changing role in the D.C. economy It’s no secret that the federal government is a major employer in the Washington, D.C. area, and it likewise has an outsized effect on the District’s economy. The five-week partial federal government shutdown that ended earlier this year cost…

March 28, 2019 | Mike Maciag

Articles | Demographics

Made in D.C.: Which areas have the highest share of D.C.-born residents

The District has always been home to a large contingent of transplants. Some of these new residents never leave, while others remain here for only a short period of time. D.C.-born residents have never accounted for a large majority of the city’s population, but the past decade of sharp population growth has…

December 13, 2018 | Mike Maciag

Articles | Business Conditions | Remote work

Where telework is headed, and what it could mean for D.C.

After years of encouraging its employees to work from home, the U.S. Agriculture Department recently scaled back its policy significantly, now permitting employees to telework just one day a week instead of up to four. The Education Department, too, implemented a new collective bargaining agreement earlier this year without any provisions on…

May 15, 2018 | Mike Maciag

Articles | Workforce

How military employment in D.C. has changed over time

Defense spending and employment play a key role in the role in D.C.’s local economy, as well as the broader metropolitan region. Nearly 27,000 active duty, reserve and civilian personnel were based in D.C. as of late last year, according to Department of Defense (DoD) figures. The federal government also typically awards…

March 12, 2018 | Mike Maciag

Articles | Business Conditions | Workforce

The most underrepresented industries in D.C.’s economy

Manufacturing facilities, department stores and car dealerships all employ sizable numbers of workers in many parts of the country. But in the District of Columbia, they’re not so common. These and other types of industries are underrepresented locally, providing fewer jobs given the size of the economy than most other places. D.C.’s…

December 13, 2017 | Mike Maciag

Articles | Criminal Justice

D.C. police staffing has declined, but service demands haven’t subsided

A crack cocaine epidemic and soaring homicide rates plagued the District of Columbia for a span of several years beginning in the late 1980s. In response, the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) ramped up hiring in 1989, adding more than 1,000 police officers over only about a year and a half in an…

September 14, 2017 | Mike Maciag

Articles | Demographics

Migration to D.C. remains stable, but plummets for rest of region

Since 2012, D.C.’s net domestic migration has remained positive, but the rest of the metro region has seen more people leave for other parts of the U.S. than move into those jurisdictions. Over much of the past decade, the Washington, D.C. metropolitan region has enjoyed relatively strong population gains, and the latest…

June 20, 2017 | Mike Maciag