Newswise — Nonprofit employment in Maryland grew more than twice as fast as jobs in the state's for-profit sector between 1995 and 2005, according to a new Johns Hopkins University study.
During those 10 years, Maryland's nonprofit sector proved to be a consistently strong economic force with a 36 percent employment increase compared with just a 15.3 percent increase by the for-profit sector, said Lester Salamon, director of the Center for Civil Society Studies within the university's Institute for Policy Studies and a leading expert on nonprofits.
"In the most recent year covered by our report, the growth rate of nonprofit employment was actually three times the growth rate of the for-profit workforce," Salamon said. "This demonstrates the crucial role that nonprofits now play in the state's economy."
This increase brought the state's nonprofit workforce to 237,246 jobs at the end of 2005. By that time, Maryland's nonprofit organizations employed close to five times as many workers as the state's information industry (including telecommunications and information services), more than twice as many workers as the state's entire finance and insurance industry, and almost a third more workers than the state's construction industry.
Maryland's nonprofit organizations generated $9.9 billion in wages in 2005, or more than 8 percent of the state's total payroll. These wages translated into an estimated $450 million of personal income tax revenue for Maryland's state and local governments and approximately $1.9 billion in federal tax revenues.
"The importance of the nonprofit sector goes way beyond this significant economic impact," said Peter V. Berns, executive director of the Maryland Association of Nonprofit Organizations. "Nonprofits provide the glue that holds our communities together in so many ways."
Additional findings of the report include:
"¢ Nonprofit sector employment represents 9.4 percent of all jobs in Maryland (or about 1 out of every 11 jobs), well above the United States average of 7.2 percent.
"¢ Between 2004 and 2005, nonprofit employment in the state grew 2 percent, compared to the 0.6 percent growth rate of the state's for-profit workforce.
"¢ Nonprofit job growth was especially strong in the Washington and Baltimore suburbs (2.6 and 2.1 percent, respectively). This suggests a continued suburbanization of nonprofit jobs in Maryland—a trend also evident in other states.
"¢ Even though nonprofit employment growth in the city of Baltimore was lower than the state average (1.3 percent vs. 2.0 percent), it far outpaced the growth in Baltimore's for-profit workforce, which suffered a net decline of 6,441 jobs, a drop of over 3 percent.
"¢ Reflecting these changes, the Baltimore and Washington suburbs account for the bulk (52 percent) of nonprofit jobs in the state.
"¢ Although more than half of the state's nonprofit employment is located in suburban areas, nonprofit organizations actually account for a larger proportion of total private jobs in other parts of the state. Nonprofit employment accounts for an especially large share of total private employment in the city of Baltimore (30 percent), Kent County (22.1 percent), Montgomery County (16.5 percent), Allegany County (15.6 percent), and Somerset County (14.2 percent).
"¢ Nonprofit organizations are active in a range of fields in Maryland. Hospitals account for the bulk (38 percent) of these jobs, followed by educational services (18 percent), nursing and residential care (13 percent), and social assistance (11 percent). To view the entire report, Maryland Nonprofit Employment Update, which includes a county-by-county breakdown of nonprofit employment, visit http://www.jhu.edu/ccss .
The private nonprofit sector comprises private universities, schools, hospitals, clinics, day care centers, social service providers, symphonies, museums, art galleries, theaters, environmental organizations and many others. The report is part of the Nonprofit Economic Data Project at The Johns Hopkins University. The data in this report draw on reports filed by employers with the Maryland Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation, and cover the period through the end of 2005.
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