Baltimore Economy Dashboard launches with 43 data points for local trends

The Baltimore Development Corporation rolled out its Economy Dashboard on June 11, giving residents and businesses a single place to check 43 separate measures of housing, jobs, finance, population and commercial activity.

The new site matters now because economic decisions in Baltimore often rely on scattered reports that arrive at different times. Planners, investors and small-business owners have said they need quicker access to the same numbers before choosing locations or setting budgets, and the dashboard pulls those figures together without requiring multiple subscriptions or manual searches.

Baltimore Development Corporation President Colin Tarbert began exploring the idea after meetings with economic officials in Phoenix and Tampa last June. Bloomberg Associates covered the cost and managed the build, drawing on an existing relationship with the corporation that started during pandemic recovery talks four years ago. Neighborhood Nexus, based in Atlanta, handled the data work under community impact officer Nikolai Elneser, while Chicago firm Assemblage completed the full-stack development. The result runs on mobile devices and refreshes automatically each quarter.

Six topic areas drawn from nine sources

The dashboard focuses on jobs, workforce, real estate, small businesses, startups and consumer spending. Some indicators come from free public releases such as the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey and Bureau of Labor Statistics releases. Others, including detailed workforce figures from Lightcast, normally require paid access. Maps show neighborhood-level differences in rent burden and consumer spending, while charts track changes in venture capital or unemployment from one quarter to the next.

Over the first month after launch, Tarbert reported that early users found the information both accessible and straightforward to interpret. The site is expected to shape future editions of the Baltimore Together Summit and other corporation planning efforts.

How to use the tool for decisions

Anyone can visit the dashboard at cityeconomy.org/baltimore or through the Baltimore Development Corporation site to compare recent quarters or zoom into specific neighborhoods. Real-estate investors can check cost-burden maps before scouting properties, entrepreneurs can review small-business and startup metrics when weighing new locations, and city staff can pull workforce numbers for service planning. Because the platform updates without manual entry, the same link will stay current through the next quarterly refresh.