Economy
Once a predominantly industrial town, with an economic base focused on steel processing, shipping, auto manufacturing, and transportation, the city experienced deindustrialization which cost residents tens of thousands of low-skill, high-wage jobs. The city now relies on a low-wage service economy, which accounts for 90% of jobs in the city.
Baltimore's unemployment rate in July 2012 was 11%, and the 2012 closure of a major steel plant at Sparrows Point is expected to have a further impact on employment and the local economy. One quarter of Baltimore residents (and 37% of Baltimore children) live in poverty.
The city is home to the Johns Hopkins Hospital. Other large companies in Baltimore include Under Armour, Cordish Company,, Legg Mason, T. Rowe Price, and Royal Farms. A sugar refinery owned by American Sugar Refining is one of Baltimore's cultural icons. Nonprofits based in Baltimore include Lutheran Services in America and Catholic Relief Services.
Read more about this topic: Baltimore
Famous quotes containing the word economy:
“The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get “a good job,” but to perform well a certain work; and, even in a pecuniary sense, it would be economy for a town to pay its laborers so well that they would not feel that they were working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific, or even moral ends. Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Unaware of the absurdity of it, we introduce our own petty household rules into the economy of the universe for which the life of generations, peoples, of entire planets, has no importance in relation to the general development.”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)