Is Administrative & Office Support a Good Job Market in Baltimore-Columbia-Towson, MD?

Executive Verdict

Market rating: competitive | Confidence: High

This is still a real market: office and administrative support accounts for 159,220 jobs in Baltimore-Columbia-Towson, equal to 11.7% of local employment, and metro unemployment was 3.9% in August 2026.[4][9] But it is not an easy market, because Maryland administrative and office support postings were down 8.7% year-over-year in September 2026, while Baltimore professional and business services employment slipped 0.3512% year-over-year in August 2026.[8][21] The practical read is that openings exist, but employers look selective and the easiest path is through onsite, sector-specific support work rather than generic remote admin applications.[16][1]

Best positioned: Candidates with recent onsite office experience, solid data-entry and Microsoft Office skills, and comfort with scheduling or insurance-verification workflows have the best odds right now, especially in healthcare-linked settings.[2][1]

Main caution: The biggest misconception is treating this like a broad remote-office market when about 90% of sampled local postings are onsite and only about 5% are remote.[16]

What Changed Recently

• Baltimore metro unemployment fell to 3.9% in August 2026, and the metro employment level was up 0.5272% year-over-year.[9][11]: That tells you the local economy is still absorbing workers, so this is not a collapse market.
• Baltimore total nonfarm employment slipped -0.4697% year-over-year and professional and business services slipped -0.3512% year-over-year in August 2026.[34][21]: Corporate-office demand is not expanding much, which makes generalist office roles harder to win than the headline unemployment rate alone suggests.
• Maryland administrative and office support employment was down 0.6% year-over-year in September 2026, and active postings for the field were down 8.7% year-over-year.[7][8]: That is the clearest sign that employers are still hiring, but with less breadth than a year ago.
• National CPI rose +3.0% year-over-year in August 2026 while average hourly earnings rose +3.0% year-over-year in September 2026.[22][23]: In plain terms, broad wage growth is only just keeping up with inflation, so your best negotiating leverage is specialization, not the macro economy.
• Saval Foods said it plans 107 new full-time jobs over four years in Howard County, and Bozzuto plans to move 225 employees into a new Howard County headquarters in early 2027, but neither announcement breaks out administrative hiring.[35][36]: These are possible future office-support tailwinds, but not near-term evidence that generic admin hiring is suddenly opening up.

What This Means for You

Entry-Level Candidates

Difficulty: Moderate to hard. There are many entry-skewed openings, but that also means heavy applicant traffic.

Best target: Onsite front desk, receptionist, scheduling, and general admin roles in healthcare and hospitality-heavy employers.

Biggest mistake: Applying as a generic office candidate without showing speed, accuracy, customer handling, and concrete software use.

Next step: Build two resume versions now: one for front-desk/customer-facing admin work and one for back-office admin/data-entry work.

Mid-Career Candidates

Difficulty: Moderate if you can show ownership of calendars, reporting, executive support, or workflow fixes; harder if your background reads as purely clerical.

Best target: Executive assistant, senior administrative assistant, office lead, and team-coordination roles where stakeholders care about judgment and follow-through.

Biggest mistake: Leading with duties instead of outcomes, especially if you have already supported leaders, handled confidential materials, or coordinated across teams.

Next step: Rewrite your recent experience into quantified support scope: leaders supported, calendars managed, travel handled, meetings run, vendors coordinated, and process improvements made.

Career Switchers

Difficulty: Harder than it looks, but workable if you are moving from retail, hospitality, patient service, or customer-facing work.

Best target: Roles where service experience transfers directly into scheduling, intake, reception, dispatch, or office coordination.

Biggest mistake: Trying to jump straight into executive assistant titles without first proving office-system fluency.

Next step: Translate your prior work into admin language: scheduling, records accuracy, cash handling, phone volume, customer de-escalation, and documentation.

Salary Reality

moderate pay broad access

Government wage data puts Baltimore office and administrative support at a $54,490 annual mean and a $49,590 annual median in 2025, with a 25th-to-75th percentile range of $41,070 to $62,400 and a 90th-percentile figure of $79,230.[5][6][26][27][28] Local posting data points in a similar but not identical direction: advertised salaries center on about $50k to $69k, and hourly postings center on about $17 to $22 / hour.[29][30]

This is somewhat better than the national occupation averages of $51,560 mean and $47,450 median, so Baltimore is not a low-pay office-support market.[31][32] But the Baltimore-area CPI was up 2.3% over the year through August 2026, so a merely average offer can still feel tight if the job is fully onsite and commute-heavy.[33]

The pay spread is wide. Executive secretaries and executive administrative assistants averaged $80,590, while receptionists and information clerks averaged $39,470, and general secretaries and administrative assistants excluding legal, medical, and executive roles averaged $24.51 per hour.[4] That means pay improves sharply with specialization, senior stakeholder support, or supervisory responsibility rather than with the job family alone.

Best-paying path: The strongest pay sits in executive support and broader office-support supervision rather than in front-desk or basic clerical work.[4]

Caution: Do not overread the top end: the $79,230 90th-percentile figure covers the whole occupation family, and many current local postings sit much closer to the middle of the range than to executive-assistant compensation.[28][29][4]

Where the Opportunities Are Concentrated

Real opportunity is concentrated in a few operating environments, not evenly spread across all "office jobs." In the recent local posting sample, hospitals and health care accounted for about 30% of postings, another healthcare bucket for about 20%, hospitality for about 15%, health care services and hospitals for about 10%, and restaurants for about 10%.[1] That lines up with the most consistently active named employers in the sample, including LifeBridge Health Inc, Mercy Medical Center, Inc., and Domino's Inc.[15] Within the occupation, the market is broad but layered. Baltimore had 29,780 secretaries and administrative assistants excluding legal, medical, and executive roles, 8,660 receptionists and information clerks, 8,260 executive assistants, and 15,070 first-line supervisors of office and administrative support workers in May 2025.[4] Executive assistants are especially concentrated locally, with an employment concentration of 2.06 times the national average, which is one of the clearest signs that senior support work can be a better niche here than in many metros.[4] The catch is access. About 70% of sampled postings skew entry-level, and about 90% are onsite, so the market is broadest for people willing to work in person and strongest on basic office throughput, customer handling, scheduling, and documentation.[25][16][2]

• Healthcare front office and scheduling (high): This is the clearest local pocket of demand because healthcare-related employers dominate the recent posting mix, and appointment scheduling plus insurance verification each show up in about 10% of postings.[1][2]
• General admin and data-entry support (moderate): This is still a large lane, and data entry appears in about 25% of local postings while Microsoft Office appears in about 15%.[2] The opportunity is real, but these are also the roles most likely to draw broad competition.
• Executive support and office leadership (moderate): This segment is narrower but more attractive. Executive assistants earned a local mean annual wage of $80,590, and the occupation is concentrated at 2.06 times the national average in Baltimore.[4]
• Remote-first admin work (limited): This is the weakest local lane because only about 5% of sampled postings were remote and another about 5% were hybrid.[16]

Where to focus: Focus first on onsite healthcare-linked admin roles, then stretch into executive-support openings if you already have calendar ownership, meeting support, and stakeholder coordination experience.

Skills and Credentials Worth Pursuing

• Data entry (table stakes): It appears in about 25% of local postings, making it the clearest baseline screen for this market.[2]
• Microsoft Office and Microsoft Word (table stakes): Microsoft Office appears in about 15% of local postings and Microsoft Word in about 10%, so practical fluency still matters more than generic "computer skills."[2]
• Customer service and front-desk communication (table stakes): Customer service shows up in about 15% of local postings, which fits a market tilted toward healthcare, hospitality, and restaurant-linked employers.[2][1]
• Appointment scheduling and insurance verification (differentiator): Appointment scheduling and insurance verification each appear in about 10% of local postings, reflecting how much of the local admin market sits near healthcare operations.[2][1]
• AI and automation proficiency (differentiator): Administrative workflows are increasingly being reshaped by tools such as Microsoft Copilot and Google Workspace AI, and employers are increasingly seeking digital literacy and AI literacy in administrative talent.[37][38]
• Data analysis and reporting (premium): Data Analysis and Reporting is identified as an emerging administrative skill in 2026, and it is one of the clearest ways to move from routine support into higher-value coordination work.[37]
• Certified Administrative Professional (CAP) (differentiator): Local postings rarely specify certifications, with none specified in less than 5% of sampled postings, so CAP works better as a differentiator than as a hiring checkbox.[39][40]
• Business Office Manager Certification (CBOM) (differentiator): CBOM is aligned with office administration, workflow coordination, HR support, and financial basics, which makes it useful for office-manager and business-office paths.[41]

Adjacent Roles to Consider

• Patient access representative or medical office scheduler (both): Healthcare is the strongest local admin hiring pocket, and insurance verification plus appointment scheduling each show up in about 10% of local postings.[1][2] Nationally, medical secretaries and administrative assistants are projected to grow 4.2% from 2024 to 2034.[3]
• Recruiting coordinator (pivot): Calendar management, data entry, scheduling, and candidate communication transfer well from office support into people-ops work.
• Accounts payable or finance assistant (pivot): Detail accuracy, document handling, follow-up, and office systems discipline all transfer from administrative support into finance-support work.
• Operations coordinator (both): If your background already includes vendor follow-up, scheduling, paperwork control, and cross-team coordination, this is a natural next step.

30 / 60 / 90-Day Plan

First 30 Days

• Split your resume into two or three versions: front desk/scheduling, general administrative support, and executive support.
• Create a proof-of-skill sheet that lists software, typing/data-entry work, scheduling volume, reporting tasks, and any customer-facing metrics.
• Widen your search radius for onsite work instead of filtering for remote-only roles.
• Target healthcare-linked employers first and rewrite your bullets around scheduling, documentation accuracy, and service recovery.

Days 31-60

• Complete one visible workflow project: a meeting-management template, inbox triage system, scheduling dashboard, or document-control process you can show in interviews.
• Practice using one AI assistant tool for admin tasks such as calendar prep, note cleanup, and draft emails so you can discuss it concretely.
• If you want advancement, start CAP prep; if you want office-operations leadership, evaluate CBOM.
• Add adjacent applications each week in patient access, recruiting coordination, and finance-support roles rather than staying boxed into generic admin titles.

Days 61-90

• If response rates stay weak, narrow your target to one niche such as healthcare front office, executive support, or office operations coordination.
• Collect two strong references who can speak to reliability, discretion, speed, and follow-through.
• Track interview-to-offer friction points and revise your pitch around whichever gap keeps surfacing: software, pace, industry knowledge, or onsite availability.
• Negotiate based on scope and specialization, not title alone, especially if you handle executive calendars, reporting, or process ownership.

Methodology and Confidence

This September 2026 report was generated on October 10, 2026. Latest direct national data: October 2026. Latest direct Baltimore-Columbia-Towson, MD data: September 2026.

Confidence: Overall confidence: High. This page is anchored in recent local labor data and supported by multiple independent sources.

Limitations

• The best occupationwide Baltimore wage and employment benchmarks in this report come from May 2025, so the detailed role mix and pay ladder may have shifted since then even though they remain the strongest local anchor.[4][5][6]
• Some short-term demand signals used here, including Maryland-wide office-support employment and posting changes, are statewide proxies because comparable occupation-specific metro trend data is not published for Baltimore.[7][8]
• The monthly unemployment, labor-force, and employment change figures for Baltimore and Maryland are preliminary and can be revised, so recent momentum should be read as directional rather than final.[9][10][11][12][13]
• The Callings.ai job database is a partial, deduplicated sample of online postings, so direction of demand, leading employer names, work-arrangement mix, and skill patterns are more reliable than exact counts or precise market shares.[14][15][16][2]
• This page is tightly scoped to administrative and office support, so related markets such as medical records and billing, accounting clerks, warehouse clerks, and HR assistants are intentionally excluded from the core reading.

References

1. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
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4. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Occupational Employment and Wages in Baltimore-Columbia-Towson — May 2025 : U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics · 2026-07 · bls.gov
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6. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · data.bls.gov
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9. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-08 · data.bls.gov
10. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-08 · data.bls.gov
11. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-08 · data.bls.gov
12. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-08 · data.bls.gov
13. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-08 · data.bls.gov
14. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
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17. Reveliolabs. Mass-layoff Notices — Revelio Public Labor Statistics (RPLS) · 2026-09 · reveliolabs.com
18. Thebanner. Baltimore and Maryland news about jobs, careers, and work- The Baltimore Banner · 2026-10 · thebanner.com
19. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Secretaries and Administrative Assistants · 2025-09 · bls.gov
20. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-09 · data.bls.gov
21. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-08 · data.bls.gov
22. Federal Reserve Economic Data. Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: All Items in U.S. City Average · 2026-08 · fred.stlouisfed.org
23. Federal Reserve Economic Data. Average Hourly Earnings of All Employees, Total Private · 2026-09 · fred.stlouisfed.org
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29. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
30. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
31. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · data.bls.gov
32. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · data.bls.gov
33. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Consumer Price Index, Baltimore-Columbia-Towson — August 2026 : U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics · 2026-09 · bls.gov
34. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-08 · data.bls.gov
35. Baltimorefishbowl. Saval Foods to open new HQ in Howard County, add over 100 jobs · 2026-09 · baltimorefishbowl.com
36. Thebanner. Bozzuto is relocating its headquarters from Greenbelt to Howard County early next year · 2026-09 · thebanner.com
37. Aicareerindex. Measure Your Position in the AI Economy | AI Career Index · 2026-07 · aicareerindex.com
38. Research. Research Online Degrees & Colleges That Fit You Best! | Research.com · 2026-07 · research.com
39. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
40. Ucertify. Top 10 Office Productivity Certifications: Best Office Productivity Certifications 2026 · 2026-06 · ucertify.com
41. Managementstrategy. Managementstrategy - emerging_credential_business_office_manager_certification · 2026-10 · managementstrategy.com

Live Openings in This Market

This report is published monthly; its companion page tracks the active Administrative & Office Support openings in Baltimore-Columbia-Towson, MD from the live Callings.ai job index. Browse current Administrative & Office Support openings in Baltimore-Columbia-Towson, MD.