Every month they pack a union hall in Baltimore for a retiree gathering. When a singer at their September meeting performed a stand-up-for-manufacturing song with the lyrics "it's time for us to fight for how we live," the room echoed with applause.
"I'm hoping things get better," said Gertrude Misterka of Dundalk. Supplemental insurance costs, once paid by the company, are more than her $100-a-month pension as the widow of a Beth Steel worker.
Pain versus gain
Add up the pain and the gain, many say, and both the region and state come out winners from this seismic economic shift. Median household income in Maryland isn't just higher than any other state, it's a full 34 percent more than the nation's. Manufacturing-heavy Michigan, one of the wealthiest states in the country four decades ago, is now below average.
Experts say the long shift to knowledge jobs - particularly ones tied to federal spending - is what helped protect the area from the 2001 recession. Basu, the Baltimore economist, warns that Maryland should not expect similar immunity from the current troubles, but he remains optimistic that the region will come through in decent shape, and prosper.
Others are less sanguine about the longer term.
Charles W. McMillion, chief economist of MBG Information Services in Washington, said Maryland has merely been "staying in place" in recent years. Some of the new jobs pay as well as or better than the manufacturing work being lost, he said; many don't.
Others warn that the new economy can move offshore just as surely as manufacturing. It started with repetitive, routine tech jobs. But it hasn't stopped.
"You're beginning to see some of the more innovative scientific work also being outsourced overseas," said C. Warren Mullins, vice president for business development at the Aberdeen branch of Battelle, an R&D nonprofit that does work in life sciences, defense and similar fields. "It's kind of like job creep moving up the food chain. That's a troubling thing."
With change coming faster, a business or region can quickly get left behind. Constant innovation is needed, companies and economists say, and the key is a work force that's both educated enough and numerous enough for the job.
Mullins worries about how the Baltimore area will meet that challenge. But he is also struck by how much it has evolved from its blue-collar roots - and how knowledge-job growth appears to be building on itself "like a snowball going downhill."
"We've become very high-tech now," he said. "We need to somehow figure out how to re-brand the region so we take advantage of who we are and not who we were."
Tomorrow: Workers need more education to keep up with the region's economy, but funding for job training is falling fast.
knowledge economies
The Milken Institute's closely watched State Technology and Science Index - a measurement of knowledge-economy strength - ranked Maryland second this year:
1. Massachusetts
2. Maryland
3. Colorado
4. California
5. Washington state
