Maryland has registered a record unemployment rate of 1.6% in September — less than half the national unemployment rate of 3.8% that month — Labor Department data shows.
That’s the lowest seasonally adjusted unemployment rate of any state on records going back to 1976, according to a CNN analysis.
Metropolitan areas in the state are also seeing some of the lowest unemployment rates in the country, including the Baltimore metro and the California-Lexington Park area.
A massive loss of working-age people in the state in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, and its slow recovery since, is the key reason behind the state’s ultra-low unemployment rate.
However, Maryland’s job market is still robust, with government and health care employers adding jobs at a brisk pace.
Low unemployment, a smaller pool of available workers and more than 180,000 job openings in the state, according to government figures, means that workers in Maryland have the leverage to switch jobs and demand higher wages.
The biggest industries in Maryland are government, health care, education and professional services. Fort Meade, a military base, is the largest employer in the state, according to Moody’s Analytics.
The University System of Maryland and Johns Hopkins University, along with each university’s medical system, are also among the biggest employers.
Government employers have consistently added positions in the state over the past year, with the sector growing by more than 17,000 jobs in September from the same month a year earlier, according to the Labor Department.
State and local governments employ vastly more Marylanders than the federal government, which still has a large presence in the state. Health care and hospitality businesses have also been adding jobs at a solid clip in recent months.
“This concentration of new jobs in Maryland are in the industries seeing the highest growth across the nation,” Christina DePasquale, an associate professor of practice at Johns Hopkins Carey Business School, told CNN.
Director of Human Resources
1mounemployed as in receiving an unemployment check? how many people have exited the workforce though?