New Jobs

Maryland's approximately 30,000 nonprofits range from the smallest all-volunteer organizations to the largest private employer in the state. Greg Cantori loves them all. As CEO of Maryland Nonprofits since October, he's in his self-described dream job, running one of the nation's largest state associations for nonprofits after 20 years of working in the local sector. He recently chatted with The Baltimore Sun about challenges facing nonprofits and how they're coping. How much are federal budget pressures affecting local nonprofits?

PRESTON - The familiar orange - white - and - black trucks that spread this town's name from coast to coast no longer ply its tree-lined streets. It's been two years since Preston Trucking Co. Inc. stunned the inhabitants of this slow-paced Eastern Shore community, laying off 295 workers, declaring bankruptcy and closing down after 67 years. For workers who had come to expect lifetime jobs, who considered themselves part of a close-knit corporate family, the news hit like a punch. Today, as with any family that's suffered a loss, folks in Preston have mostly recovered from the shock of losing their economic mainstay - but the scars remain.

SKW Constructors plans to hire up to 100 people to construct concrete tubes and fans at the Sparrows Point Shipyard and Industrial park in Dundalk, according to Baltimore County economic development officials. Subcontractors are expected to hire additional people to work on the project, including carpenters, mechanics, surveyors and truck drivers, the county said. "This project is a huge boost in our efforts to bring new businesses and new jobs back to Sparrows Point," Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz said in a statement.

My mother went into paid work soon after my father's clothing store was flooded out in a hurricane, almost wiping him out. She had no choice. We needed the money. This was some two decades before a tidal wave of wives and mothers went into paid work. For the relatively few women with four-year college degrees, this change was the consequence of wider educational opportunity and new laws against gender discrimination that opened professions to well-educated women. But the vast majority of women entered the paid workforce because male wages were dropping.

A year ago, Washington marketing associate Tara Miller felt lucky just to have a job in her field. So while she wanted to work in Baltimore — where she could be closer to her boyfriend — Miller stayed put at her job in D.C. But by March of this year, she was feeling antsy. "I was poking around and ended up seeing some openings," including an account executive position at Himmelrich PR in Baltimore, Miller said. "I threw in my resume and ended up getting it," she said.

CENTREVILLE -- Fifty miles from Baltimore, 60 from Washington, Queen Anne's County is separated from the urban core by a distance both physical and psychological. About 60 percent of the county is farmland. That's also - not entirely coincidentally - the share of residents who commute outside the county to work. Even so, the pace of job growth here was nearly the fastest in the state at last count. Many of Maryland's outlying counties are seeing strong employment gains on the heels of population booms.

Maryland's unemployment situation took a turn for the worse this spring and hasn't bounced back, with new estimates suggesting that the state lost 11,000 jobs in June — among the worst performances in the country. The U.S. Department of Labor said Friday that only two states saw bigger declines in June — Wisconsin and Tennessee — after adjusting for seasonal variations, which some economists worry skews the numbers. It was Maryland's fourth month in a row of job declines by that measure, a sharp change after a strong winter.

Middle River Aircraft Systems will hire 200 people at its eastern Baltimore County plant during the next year to build brake systems for a redesigned jet that aircraft developer Boeing will soon bring to market. The additional jobs will raise the number of employees at the 1.7 million-square-foot plant to 1,000 at a time when most companies are still wary about hiring even as the economy shows signs of bottoming out. The planned hirings are a bright spot for the state's embattled manufacturing sector, which had been slowly deteriorating years before the recession hit. "This shows that companies like Middle River that really know how to embrace next-generation manufacturing can have job growth," said Mike Galiazzo, executive director of the Regional Manufacturing Institute.

In his State of the State speech this week, Gov.Martin O'Malleymade a provocative boast: "Because of your wise and balanced decisions about where to cut, and your smart decisions about where to invest, Maryland's businesses are creating jobs again. Last year, Maryland businesses created more new jobs than we have in any year since this recession hit, and at twice the rate of our good neighbors in Virginia. " In the ongoing rivalry between Mr. O'Malley and Virginia Gov. Robert McDonnell, them's fightin' words.

The plan to move 450 jobs from the Financial Management Services facility in Hyattsville to the Bureau of Public Debt in Parkersburg, W.Va., has been postponed for five years, members of the Maryland congressional delegation announced Thursday. The move — proposed by the Obama administration to save $96 million over five years — was set to begin in February 2014, but the Maryland congressional delegation negotiated with the Treasury Department for the delay. "We must have a more frugal government, but not one that hangs our people out to dry," Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski said in a statement.