Business

Maryland is continuing to make strides in the fast-growing cyber and skilled trades industries. In January, Gov. Wes Moore announced the establishment of the Maryland Cybersecurity Task Force in response to rising threats within the state and in September Howard Community College (HCC) broke ground on a Workforce Development and Trades Center.

The Maryland Association of Counties (MACo), a nonprofit, nonpartisan voice for all 24 counties in the state, is proposing that solar companies with state approval to build solar farms on agricultural land, be required to pay $3,500 to $5,000 per acre to the county where farms are located. The money would be used in that county for conservation or agricultural preservation. “MACo has been having discussions with all the state agencies and with the solar industry and so on, recognizing that next spring there’s more than likely going to be a push for further solar legislation,” Chris Heyn, Carroll County’s Department of Planning and Land Management director said at a solar work session last week.

A Hanover company has created a product that could change how data centers are built. Ciena Corp. has developed a new product that will enable companies to build bigger data centers by better connecting the millions of computers inside them. The telecommunications and cloud services company (NYSE: CIEN) expects the product will be ready by the end of 2025. Helen Xenos, senior director of portfolio marketing for Ciena, said the company developed the product – called the 1.6 terabyte coherent-lite pluggable — because the existing technology supporting data centers is reaching its limits.

About 165 million Americans get their health insurance through work, and yet most don’t spend much time considering what their employer is offering in the way of benefits and what it will cost. In fact, employees only spent about 45 minutes a year, on average, deciding which benefit options suit them best, a report from Aon found. Open enrollment season, which typically runs through early December, is an opportunity to take a closer look at what’s at stake.

Boeing will cut 10% of its workforce, or about 17,000 people, as the company’s losses mount and a machinist strike that has idled its aircraft factories enters its fifth week. It will also push back the long-delayed launch of its new wide-body airplane. The manufacturer will not deliver its still-uncertified 777X wide-body plane, which has customers that include Lufthansa and Emirates, until 2026, putting it some six years behind schedule.

The median midcareer salary for graduates of 13 four-year colleges and universities in Greater Washington is $124,476, according to data from Payscale Inc. The Seattle company has ranked the colleges and universities by the median salaries of their alumni. In the gallery above, we run down the local colleges and break out midcareer pay, which Payscale defines as the median salary for a bachelor’s degree-holder with 10+ years’ experience.

The Nobel memorial prize in economics was awarded Monday to Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James A. Robinson for research into differences in prosperity between nations. The three economists “have demonstrated the importance of societal institutions for a country’s prosperity,” the Nobel committee of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said at the announcement in Stockholm.