Top growing small businesses in Maryland
Which small-business types are adding jobs fastest in Maryland right now, ranked from official BLS employment data. Free, updated every quarter, with a JSON API.
Ranking · Maryland · 2026 Q1
Ranked by the change in jobs compared with the same quarter one year earlier. Rows marked n/a are suppressed by BLS for confidentiality.
| # | Business type | Jobs YoY | Locations YoY | Locations | Jobs | Avg weekly wage | Startup range | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cleaning & janitorial NAICS 561720 | +1.1% | -0.4% | 1,622 | 23,894 | $659 | $10,000–$50,000 | Analyze → |
| 2 | Quick-service restaurants NAICS 722513 | +0.6% | -0.7% | 5,222 | 76,148 | $494 | $50,000–$300,000 | Analyze → |
| 3 | Coffee shops & cafés NAICS 722515 | +0.2% | -0.2% | 1,091 | 12,745 | $504 | $50,000–$300,000 | Analyze → |
| 4 | Gyms & fitness studios NAICS 713940 | 0.0% | +0.4% | 757 | 14,475 | $387 | $30,000–$200,000 | Analyze → |
| 5 | Child day care NAICS 624410 | -0.3% | -2.0% | 1,316 | 19,316 | $687 | $30,000–$150,000 | Analyze → |
| 6 | Dry cleaning & laundry NAICS 812320 | -0.6% | +1.6% | 373 | 2,312 | $658 | $25,000–$150,000 | Analyze → |
| 7 | Food trucks & mobile food NAICS 722330 | -0.9% | +3.5% | 177 | 565 | $546 | $50,000–$300,000 | Analyze → |
| 8 | Full-service restaurants NAICS 722511 | -1.4% | -0.3% | 3,974 | 84,860 | $568 | $50,000–$300,000 | Analyze → |
| 9 | Auto repair shops NAICS 811111 | -1.9% | -1.6% | 1,529 | 7,417 | $1,237 | $50,000–$300,000 | Analyze → |
| 10 | Bars & taverns NAICS 722410 | -2.4% | -2.3% | 505 | 4,650 | $496 | $50,000–$300,000 | Analyze → |
| 11 | Pet care & grooming NAICS 812910 | -2.4% | +2.9% | 428 | 3,435 | $623 | $10,000–$50,000 | Analyze → |
| 12 | Hair & beauty salons NAICS 812112 | -3.6% | -0.8% | 1,305 | 6,864 | $642 | $20,000–$100,000 | Analyze → |
| 13 | Nail salons NAICS 812113 | -3.8% | +0.5% | 578 | 2,541 | $590 | $20,000–$100,000 | Analyze → |
| 14 | Landscaping services NAICS 561730 | -6.4% | -1.9% | 1,952 | 18,798 | $1,022 | $10,000–$50,000 | Analyze → |
Every state
Growth is local. The same business type can be booming in one state and shrinking in the next.
Methodology
- Source. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW), private-sector rows, 6-digit NAICS. QCEW is a near-complete count from unemployment-insurance filings, not a survey.
- Period. 2026 Q1, the latest quarter BLS has published. Each figure is compared with the same quarter a year earlier, using BLS's own over-the-year change fields.
- Ranking. By year-over-year change in month-three employment. Ties and suppressed values sort to the bottom.
- Business types. 14 consumer-facing industries that first-time entrepreneurs commonly open. The set is fixed so rankings are comparable across states.
- Startup range. Neur's planning range for the industry category, the same figures used by the Financial pillar of a Neur report. See the methodology.
- Refresh. Data is re-fetched from BLS daily and changes when a new quarter is released (about five months after the quarter ends).
- Caveats. Growth in jobs is not the same as room for a new entrant; a fast-growing type can also be getting crowded. Use a Neur report to check competition and demographics for a specific city.
Free JSON API
The full dataset is available as JSON with CORS enabled. No key required. Please cache responses for at least an hour.
| Endpoint | Returns |
|---|---|
GET /api/data/top-businesses | National ranking plus all 50 states |
GET /api/data/top-businesses?state=texas | One state (slug is the lowercase state name, hyphenated) |
Fields per row: naics, label, establishments, employment, avgWeeklyWage, employmentChangePct, establishmentsChangePct, wageChangePct, startupCost. Top level: period, source, generatedAt.
Using this data
You may reproduce these figures with attribution. Please link to this page as the source: https://www.neur.co/data/top-businesses/maryland. Screenshots of the table are welcome; a link back is what lets us keep the feed free.