Maryland?s labor market, on the strength of an expanding professional services sector, should continue to grow in 2008 amid speculation of a national economic recession.
The housing downturn has affected Maryland employers connected to the home-building and mortgage industries, but most other industries continue to add employees, said Jim Craig, owner of two Express Personnel Services staffing offices in Columbia and Greenbelt.
“We?re looking at 2008 with cautious optimism,” said Craig, whose offices provide staff for about 500 clients in the Baltimore-Washington region. “It?s not that [staffing for companies in the housing industry] has gone nonexistent, but they?ve scaled back a little bit.”
Employment growth has occurred in the professional services sector, where companies are looking to fill accounting and financial positions, Craig said.
“We recently established an accounting/financing unit to handle those clients.” Craig said.
Economists have pointed to Maryland?s highly skilled work force and increasing number of professional jobs as reasons to belief the region could avoid a recession in 2008.
Knight Kiplinger, editor in chief of Kiplinger?s Personal Finance Magazine and Kiplinger.com, at an economic forum Friday in Baltimore said Maryland?s work force is “the most skilled in America.” The state ranks first among states in percentage of professional and technical workers in the labor pool, according to the Maryland Chamber of Commerce (more than 215,000 workers).
“Few states are as well-prepared for long-term success as Maryland,” Kiplinger said.
In the 12 months ending in November, employers in Maryland added 36,400 jobs, including 9,600 jobs in the professional and business services sector, according to estimates from the U.S. Department of Labor.
From October to November, Maryland?s unemployment rate dropped from 4 percent to 3.7 percent. The unemployment rate in the Baltimore metro area decreased from 4 percent to 3.6 percent.
Anirban Basu, CEO of Sage Policy Group, predicted the state would add about 20,000 jobs in 2008.
