Every month or so I publish a report about regional economies in the U.S. state of Maryland. While topics may vary, the posts will broadly be on employment, unemployment, industrial and occupational change, as well as demographic shifts.
Economic Resilience in California-Lexington Park, MD
Download a Hi-Res PDF report In the previous post, I noted that the unemployment rate in California-Lexington Park has performed the best among metro areas in Maryland throughout the current crises. In this post, I examine the occupational structure of California-Lexington Park (C-LP) to determine why the metro area may be faring so well. To…
Maryland MSA Unemployment During the Pandemic
Download a Hi-Res PDF report The recent pandemic has caused an immense amount of economic upheaval. Business closures and reduced economic output have led to major layoffs, resulting in a spike of unemployment rates. Fortunately, unemployment rates in Maryland’s Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) increased substantially less than the national rate following the onset of the…
Maryland County Population Change: 2018 to 2019
Download a PDF report The U.S. Census Bureau recently released their county population estimates for 2019. Overall, Maryland’s population increased 9,878 from 6,035,802 in July 2018 to 6,045,680 in July 2019, an increase of 0.2%. Among the sub-state jurisdictions, there was notable variation (Figure 1). Six counties and Baltimore City recorded population decline, but only…
Population Change in the Greater Chesapeake Bay Region
Download a PDF report In a previous post, I examined population changes in Maryland’s urban economies. This post takes a broader view, examining the population of the State of Maryland and the states of the Greater Chesapeake Bay Region.[1] While Maryland’s population growth has slowed, a development that is a cause for concern, there are…
Montgomery County and Fairfax County: Economic Performance and Federal Dependence
Download a PDF report There has been concern in Suburban Maryland that it is being outperformed economically by Northern Virginia (here). Given that Suburban Maryland and Northern Virginia are both suburbs of the Washington, DC metro area, economic differences are usually declared to result from public policy differences such as tax structure. This report examines…
Decline in Maryland’s Mountain Metro, Cumberland, MD
Download a PDF report Among the nine metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) in Maryland, Cumberland suffered the most severe population declines from 2010 to 2017 (previous report here). The difficulty of Cumberland’s current situation is that it is in a vicious economic cycle. Outmigration reduces economic vibrancy. Reduced economic vibrancy encourages further outmigration. Such negative cycles…
Maryland MSAs With Declining Populations
Download a PDF report The last post provided a discussion about the size and population change of MSAs (Metropolitan or Micropolitan Statistical Areas) in Maryland. What the analysis revealed was that the three smallest MSAs were also the only MSAs to lose population from 2010 to 2017. In this post, the annual population changes of…
Maryland is Metropolitan
An Urban State Dominated by Large Metros Download a PDF report Maryland is metropolitan. Ranging from the Atlantic Ocean to the Appalachian Mountains, seven Metropolitan Statistical Areas and two Micropolitan Statistical Areas span nearly the entire geography of Maryland. While some counties have extremely rural areas, nearly all counties are economically tied to nearby…
Maryland Urban Economics 