Baltimore, MD – Technology may be convenient for most people, but for others it’s big business. Baltimore Business Journal reports that the technology industry has become a significant part of Maryland’s economy, even though growth has slowed in recent years.
As a basis for their position, the BBJ piece cites CompTIA’s Cyberstates 2016 report. This report is an annual assessment of people across the U.S. who are employed in the technology industry in some capacity and ranks them in a variety of different ways. In 2015, Maryland took 15th place, which is pretty good when you consider the size compared to higher ranked states like New York and California, which dwarf Maryland in terms of overall population.
CompTIA has guidelines for determining what exactly constitutes a technology job or business, but it can range from traditional software developers working on code to telecommunications that deal in megabits and megahertz (terms dealing with the bandwidth or speed of data transfer).
While breaking into the top third of states in technology industry employment should be celebrated, a closer look at the numbers does reveal some slight concerns. Namely, there was only a 0.4% increase in the number of people in these jobs from 2014 to 2015. The increase in the total number of in-state tech businesses grew at a similar snail’s pace of 0.5% over the same period.
“Part of the lack of growth is a workforce challenge that we all acknowledge: There’s more demand than there are people to meet that demand,” said Col. Ken McCreedy, a former former commander of Fort Meade who now leads Maryland’s cyber development efforts.
McCreedy went on to argue that salary competition from other states might be one reason for the stagnation, but that notion doesn’t seem to carry much weight when you consider Maryland was 11th on the Cyberstates ranking for tech industry wages, paying their tech employees an average of $104,700.
Overall, the report indicates that the tech industry contributes to approximately 8.1% of Maryland’s economy.