Posted on 07/21/25
| News Source: Maryland Matters
Baltimore, MD - July 21, 2025 - Maryland’s newest jobs report for June showed a decline of 8,500 total jobs, including a net loss of 2,900 jobs in the public sector, which pushed the state’s unemployment rate up slightly, from 3.2% in May to 3.3% in June, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
A large part of the employment decline was the loss of 3,500 federal government jobs, Maryland’s largest single-month decrease in federal government jobs in almost three decades, the state’s labor department said.
“Maryland continues to invest in support resources to help residents who have been impacted by federal layoffs and other actions,” the state’s labor department said in a news release.
So far this year, the state has a net positive private sector gain of 5,200 jobs. But those are expected to be dragged down going forward by federal job losses.
A recent report from the comptroller’s office called the federal government the state’s “economic engine” and a driver of its employment growth, adding more than $150 billion to the state’s economy in the most recent year for which data was available, including $26.9 billion in income alone.
The report said that Maryland, despite being only the 18th largest state in terms of population, ranked third in the number of federal employees, behind only Virginia and Washington, D.C., with its estimated 229,000 federal workers. Those employees make up about 6% of the state’s total workforce and 10% of its wages, with an average salary of $126,468.
In addition to active federal workers, the report said more than 150,000 people in Maryland receive retirement income, totaling about $8.8 billion each year.
State officials for years have fretted about the heavy reliance of the state’s economy on federal spending, and those concerns have taken a sharper edge this year with the election of President Donald Trump and his promise to cut the size of the federal workforce. Gov. Wes Moore has vowed to diversify the state economy, and state lawmakers have appointed a special 26-member House and Senate committee to track the impact of federal spending on the state through the summer.
Some early state projections anticipate as many as 29,000 workers could lose their jobs as Trump culls federal agencies and employees. The state in June launched a short-term loan program to help laid-off federal workers who might be having trouble paying their bills.
The uptick in unemployment comes as Maryland Labor Secretary Portia Wu is raising red flags about the continued solvency of the state’s unemployment fund. Wu recently told lawmakers that the state’s insurance trust fund of $2 billion currently meets federal solvency requirements, but that could change with an economic downturn or a spike in jobless numbers from what she called the current “incredibly low unemployment rate.”
Even if anticipated economic downturns do not occur, Wu said the growing number of workers who are becoming eligible for the maximum weekly benefit is stressing the system to the point where the fund could fall below federal guidelines sometime between 2026 and 2027.