Welcome home. Make yourselves comfortable.

Forbes Magazine just may have found itself a new fan: me. That’s because the magazine recently named Washington D.C. as the major U.S. city that is emerging from the national recession at a faster rate than any other.

To this, I say: Thanks for spreading the word.

I’m a big booster of the District. I’ll tell anyone who’ll listen – and even some who won’t – that DC is blessed with one of the strongest local economies and housing markets in the country. The Forbes Magazine story, which you can read here (http://www.forbes.com/2010/03/02/cities-recession-jobs-lifestyle-real-estate-housing.html), illustrates my point beautifully.

The story says that the District is coming out of the long recession better than any other major U.S. city. The reasons for this are many, but Forbes points to the district’s healthy housing market and low unemployment rate as two of the most important.

I was especially pleased to read the magazine’s comments about our local housing market. The magazine acknowledges that housing prices here did fall during the recession. But it also states that DC housing prices didn’t fall nearly as far as they did in the vast majority of other major markets.

Then there’s our unemployment rate. The DC region is blessed to feature a wide range of industries, ranging from healthcare to finance to manufacturing and everything in between. And, of course, there are the many, many federal and state government jobs here. Forbes credits these government jobs as one of the main reasons why the unemployment rate in DC is at a relatively low 6.2 percent.

There are other cities mentioned in the Forbes report, places such as Boston, Los Angeles and Austin, that are faring relatively well as the recession ends. But none of these other major cities are doing quite as well as is DC.

If you’re in need of a quick pick-me-up, check out the Forbes report. It’ll make you happy that you don’t live anywhere but in the District.

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