The Maryland Department of Commerce worked with the Eastern Shore Regional GIS Cooperative at Salisbury University to bring the dashboards to life, building on the latter’s work on the Eastern Shore Economic Recovery Project, a response to the COVID-19 pandemic. A multiyear project, the dashboards were funded by part of a $1 million grant from the U.S. Economic Development Administration.
The initiative should fuel the state’s economy, Kevin Anderson, secretary to the Maryland Department of Commerce, said in a news release.
“Making Maryland’s economy stronger and more competitive requires teamwork as well as reliable, accurate information,” Anderson said.
Each online dashboard provides a plethora of information on Maryland’s workforce, the skills needed to move into in-demand careers, and the locations of opportunity zones for new businesses looking to build or expand structures.
Created using Microsoft Power BI, the dashboards digest raw data, facilitating comparisons across jurisdictions, crafting insights into state geographic regions and providing easy access to more than a decade’s worth of data.
The Maryland Manufacturing Industry Dashboard offers perspective on the state’s manufacturing industry, based on several data streams. It visualizes information about the numbers of manufacturing establishments, employees, wages and industry concentration. This dashboard utilizes data from the Quarterly Census of Employment Wages, which is generated and kept by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The Maryland Manufacturing Workforce Dashboard helps users learn about the industry’s workforce, and features demographic data on employees and new hires. This dashboard allows users to analyze labor market data by race, sex, education, age and other demographics. It also tracks job turnover rates, areas doing the most hiring and the number of new hires at an organization.
The Maryland Transferable Skills Dashboard enables users to compare job roles throughout the state with the requisite skill sets required to fill them. Through the data sets, users can uncover the top five fastest-growing occupations in the state and the most declining occupations, by region. The site also lists hot and in-demand skills, like knowing development environment software, and the various programs and applications that support the skill, such as Microsoft Visual Basic.
The Maryland Economic Dashboard includes comprehensive data sets from 2011 to 2024 that provide quick insights into demographic, economic and social data across all counties and for the city of Baltimore. These include insights on housing, commute times, income, business development and employment. Data streams have sources including the U.S. Census Bureau, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the Maryland Department of Education.
