Maryland's unemployment rate dropped sharply in May as employers added more than 11,000 jobs, marking the third month of gains after a long downward slide.
The majority of the new jobs created in the nation last month were temporary positions connected with the U.S. Census Bureau, but Maryland's improved employment situation was apparently less lopsided toward government jobs. The private sector accounted for 4,800 new jobs in Maryland last month out of the 11,200 created, according to preliminary estimates released Friday by the U.S. Department of Labor.
Maryland's unemployment rate dropped from 7.5 percent in April to 7.2 percent last month, back to where the state's jobless rate was in August.
"I do not believe we're necessarily out of the woods, but these are all good signs," said Richard P. Clinch, director of economic research at the University of Baltimore's Jacob France Institute. "I'm guardedly optimistic that things are turning around."
Potential stumbling blocks, Clinch said, are continued uncertainty about the national economy and how financial struggles in Europe could affect jobs closer to home.
The jobs picture — and whether the gains will last — also is muddied by hiring for temporary jobs supporting the 2010 census. The Labor Department's figures are drawn from a survey, not an exhaustive count of every job. So it's not clear how much of the census hiring is accounted for in the estimates.
Though the Labor Department's survey counted a net gain of 7,000 federal government jobs in Maryland from the middle of April through the middle of May, the Census Bureau said it hired 12,000 temporary workers in the state over the same period.
Christian S. Johansson, the state's secretary of business and economic development, argued that job growth in Maryland's private sector last month was significant. It represented about 10 percent of the private-sector growth nationwide last month, even though Maryland has less than 2 percent of the country's population.
"This is the third month in a row of sustained job growth," Johansson said. "They say one month's a fluke, two is compelling and three's a trend. Well, we're getting to the trend stage now."
There's a lot of ground to make up as the state tries to shake off the recession. Maryland has 83,000 fewer jobs now than it did when the national economy began to contract in December 2007.
The full impact of the recession is even greater because the supply of prospective new workers continued to grow as employment shrank. About 215,000 state residents were looking for work and unable to find it last month.
It's the same story nationwide, only worse. The U.S. unemployment rate was 9.7 percent in May.
Not everyone coming off the unemployment rolls is landing a full-time job. Some workers are piecing together part-time jobs or contract work. And some are becoming entrepreneurs.
That's what a group of co-workers decided to do when the Baltimore cafe that employed them closed in February 2009, a victim of the recession. The workers didn't want to part ways. So seven of them offered to form a partnership with David Buscher — who owned the Fells Point eatery where they worked and the furniture store it operated inside — to launch a new cafe at the edge of Charles Village and Remington.
Charmington's is set to open in about eight weeks. All of the new partners have found other jobs since the first cafe closed, but they liked the idea of owning a piece of a business that might buffer them against future spells of unemployment.
"I think this is a good example of people who are just trying to take charge of their destiny in this sort of job market," said Buscher, 38, who feels good about the new cafe's chances as a stand-alone business.
The upside to opening in a still uncertain economy: good deals on real estate leases. And there's no shortage of prospective employees, should the partners ever need to hire.
"We're getting applications before we're even open," Buscher said. "I think we're going to try to be completely staffed from our partners, so we're not really hiring anybody right now, but people seem pretty desperate to find work."
A deep recession can prompt "necessity entrepreneurship" as unemployed workers search for ways to earn money, noted David A. Kirsch, an associate professor of strategy and entrepreneurship at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business.
He's seeing more examples of that nowadays than "opportunity entrepreneurship," or startups launched by founders who believe self-employment is their best option, not the only one. The trouble is, opportunity entrepreneurs are more likely to create jobs for others. So he hopes potential business-builders start feeling more confident about risk-taking in this economy.
"I think people are actually, if anything, a little more hesitant," Kirsch said.
jamie.smith.hopkins@baltsun.com