Loretta Holley, 37, is a high school graduate who worked for years in home health care and as a correctional officer before trying for a hospital job. Now a patient-care technician at the University of Maryland Medical Center, she will begin a community college program in January to become a registered nurse.
She won scholarships and will continue to work while in school. For the mother of three, it means a long-deferred dream finally seems possible.
"I've always wanted to be a nurse," Holley said.
Ahead of the curve
In the late 1950s, before global competition and technology advances ate away at U.S. manufacturing jobs, 30,000 workers kept Bethlehem Steel's Baltimore County furnaces belching and molten iron flowing. By 2001, the company was bankrupt, its work force down to 3,500 at Sparrows Point.
The number of workers at the complex has since declined to 2,500 under a succession of owners.
It's a familiar tale. One out of every three local jobs in 1950 was in manufacturing. Now it's one out of 20, or about 70,000. In the past seven years, manufacturing jobs in the metro area dropped by 24,000.
The saving grace is that the biggest cuts came years ago, and employment in the overall economy is up, not down. For the Cleveland and Detroit metro areas, both more dependent on manufacturing, the pain is now. From 2000 to 2007, as the Baltimore area added 70,000 jobs, Cleveland was losing nearly as many. Detroit shed almost a quarter-million.
Economists say the early hit that Baltimore took in manufacturing is part of the reason it's benefiting more now from the new economy. By the 1970s and '80s, the need for something new was apparent.
Some local governments, like Montgomery County, took active steps to recruit tech and biotech companies. The state's proximity to Washington and concentration of federal labs also gave it a head start over other states in the pursuit of knowledge jobs.
This year Maryland leapt to second on a Milken Institute ranking of high-tech states. It was fourth in the previous ranking in 2004.
"If those industries and the high-paying jobs that came with them were not being created, Maryland would be in a difficult situation," said Ross DeVol, Milken's director of regional economics. "That's pretty much where places like Ohio, Michigan and Indiana find themselves today."
