ANNAPOLIS — Maryland faces one of the steepest projected job hits from artificial intelligence of any state, even as AI-related hiring grows, according to data gathered in a new public dashboard launched Thursday by Comptroller Brooke E. Lierman’s office.
The Maryland AI Economic Impact Tracker pulls government, university and private-sector data into one place on three questions: where AI is creating jobs, where it could eliminate them and how fast Maryland businesses are adopting it. Its most striking figure comes from Tufts University’s American AI Jobs Risk Index, which projects that Maryland would lose 7.2% of its jobs to AI automation over the next several years under a median adoption scenario, the third-highest rate among the states.
Those are projections, not losses that have happened, and the comptroller’s office calls the range of uncertainty wide. Lierman said in a release that the dashboard is meant to give state and local leaders the information they need to write “thoughtful policies” as AI spreads.
What the numbers say
The tracker launches with three headline figures, according to the comptroller’s office:
- About 3,600 Maryland job postings in 2026 have required technical skills in building, running or maintaining AI systems.
- An estimated 7.2% of Maryland jobs are at risk of displacement under the Tufts index’s median adoption scenario.
- 91% of Maryland businesses use AI in some form, according to a survey the Maryland State Innovation Team conducted last summer.
The release does not give the survey’s sample size or define what counts as using AI “in some capacity,” so the 91% figure could include anything from a chatbot subscription to automated production systems.
Behind the 7.2% figure
The Tufts index, produced by the Digital Planet research center at the university’s Fletcher School and released in March, tries to estimate how likely AI exposure is to turn into actual job loss rather than simply measuring which tasks AI could do. It covers 784 occupations across all 50 states and 530 metro and rural areas. Nationally, its central estimate is 9.3 million jobs at risk over two to five years, with a range of 2.7 million to 19.5 million depending on how fast employers adopt the technology.
Washington, D.C., topped the index for the share of jobs at risk, followed by Massachusetts, Virginia and Maryland, which explains the comptroller’s ranking of Maryland third among states. The index puts the Washington metro area, which includes Charles and Calvert counties, among a handful of regions facing at least $20 billion a year in projected lost household income.
One important limit: the Tufts researchers say the index does not account for jobs AI might create, because reliable data on that is lacking. The tracker’s job-postings figure is a partial counterweight, but the two numbers measure different things and can’t simply be netted against each other.
No county numbers yet
The launch materials do not break out figures for Calvert, Charles or St. Mary’s counties, and the statewide rates may not translate evenly to Southern Maryland, where the economy leans heavily on federal work, from defense contracting around Naval Air Station Patuxent River to commuters into Washington. Whether that mix makes the region more or less exposed than the state as a whole is a question the tracker does not yet answer.
The office says the tracker will be updated quarterly as new data and forecasts come out. Starting in 2027, it plans periodic research briefs using economic modeling and scenario analysis to show a range of Maryland-specific economic and fiscal effects from faster AI adoption.
The AI dashboard joins a growing set of comptroller data tools, including a quarterly economic and fiscal snapshot launched in June and a federal impact dashboard tracking how federal spending decisions hit Maryland. Lierman, who won a second term Tuesday, also pressed the U.S. Census Bureau this week to drop proposed 2030 count changes she says could cost the state federal funding.
