Business in Maryland
Maryland's leading industries by employment are health care, social assistance, state and local government, retail trade, and professional and technical services.
The Fort George G. Meade military installation, which includes employees of the National Security Agency, is the state's biggest employer at 44,540.
[3] Large private employers in Maryland include Black & Decker, Legg Mason, Lockheed Martin, Marriott International, ZeniMax Media, McCormick & Company, Perdue Farms, General Motors, IBM, Northrop Grumman, and Verizon.
[6] Organizations in Maryland received $525 million for their research and development (R&D) awards from the National Institutes of Health[7] and $11.6 billion in total R&D federal obligations, ranking first among states on a per capita basis.
[12] With 270,000 information technology (IT) workers, the Baltimore-Washington region is ranked first in concentration of IT employment, even greater than Silicon Valley and Boston.
[12] According to Quality Counts, Education Week’s annual assessment of key indicators of student success, Maryland’s K-12 public school system ranked first nationally for the third year in a row.
[18] Johns Hopkins University (JHU) ranks third among top research medical schools, and excels in the specialties of AIDS, drug/alcohol abuse, geriatrics, internal medicine, pediatrics, and women’s health.
The school's strengths include graduate business information systems; atomic/molecular/optical/physics, condensed matter and quantum physics; and aerospace engineering.
[24] The Maryland State Legislature on April 11, 2011 passed InvestMaryland (HB 173), Governor O'Malley's economic development initiative to fuel venture capital investment.
[25] For the fifth year in a row, the Maryland Technology Development Corporation has been recognized by Entrepreneur Magazine as the top early-stage venture capital investor in the nation.
[31] Among U.S. cities with populations exceeding two million, Baltimore ranks fourth for its favorable business tax structure according to a study by KPMG International.
[35] Maryland businesses have access to the Chesapeake Bay, the Atlantic Ocean, Washington, D.C. and all of the East Coast’s major distribution routes.
The state's location includes overnight trucking access to approximately one-third of the U.S. population, approximately 100 million people; a deep-water, inland port that handles more than 40 million tons of cargo annually; two Class I railroads - CSX and Norfolk Southern - and five short lines; six interstate highways that link the state to every major U.S. market; and three international airports within an hour’s drive.
The analysis is based on quality of life measures such as income, employment, cost of living and crime, for metropolitan areas with a population of 500,000 or greater.
Cities and towns were ranked on such quality-of-life factors as good jobs, low crime, quality schools, open space, reasonable home prices, and recreational and cultural activities.
The industry generated $1 billion in economic impact and more than 10,500 full-time equivalent jobs, according to a Maryland State Arts Council study.
[46] In 1955, the charity Kappa Guild began raising funds to support children’s health and welfare, providing medical equipment and resources to pediatric hospitals and programs across Maryland.
