A new national analysis confirms what the state’s own Comptroller has documented for years: Maryland’s cost burden is pushing residents out — and a $1.68 billion tax package from last session hasn’t helped.
By Michael Phillips | MDBayNews
A household earning $100,000 a year in Maryland is now classified as lower-middle class — not by political rhetoric, but by a straightforward application of federal census data and Pew Research Center methodology.
That finding comes from a May 2026 analysis by financial platform MoneyLion, which used 2024 U.S. Census Bureau figures and Pew’s definition of the middle class — households earning between two-thirds and double the state’s median income — to map income-class thresholds across all 50 states. Maryland ranked third nationally, with the top income for the lower-middle class set at $114,339. Only Massachusetts ($116,476) and New Jersey ($115,882) rank higher.
The methodology is not partisan. It is math.
Maryland’s median household income is $102,905, according to the MoneyLion data. Annual costs for basic necessities — housing, food, transportation, healthcare — average $54,431. That leaves a six-figure earner with roughly $45,000 in discretionary income before state and local taxes, which rank seventh-highest in the nation at 9.70 percent of personal income.
The Comptroller’s Numbers Tell the Same Story
The MoneyLion finding does not exist in a vacuum. Maryland’s own Comptroller, Democrat Brooke Lierman, issued a 78-page economic analysis in October 2025 documenting a decade of domestic outmigration driven by housing costs and the overall cost-of-living burden.
From 2010 to 2023, 2.3 million Maryland residents moved to other states — outpacing the 2 million who moved in. The state’s population remained roughly stable only because of international immigration and natural population growth. The net loss of domestic residents averaged roughly 40,000 per year in recent years, Lierman reported.
The financial consequences are compounding. In 2022 alone, the adjusted gross income of residents leaving Maryland exceeded the income of those arriving by $2.7 billion. The 164,000 people who left that year took $10.2 billion in tax revenue capacity out of the state. The 138,000 who arrived brought $7.5 billion with them.
The demographic profile of who is leaving has also shifted. Before the pandemic, net outmigrants were predominantly older — 63 percent were age 55 or over between 2011 and 2019. Between 2020 and 2022, that share dropped to 46 percent. Younger working-age Marylanders are increasingly making the calculation that the state’s cost burden is not worth it.
Most go to Florida, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, or Texas.
A $1.68 Billion Tax Package — and Another Deficit Waiting
The 2025 legislative session produced the largest tax increase in Maryland’s recent history. Facing a $3.3 billion structural deficit, the General Assembly passed, and Gov. Wes Moore signed a $67 billion budget that included more than $1.68 billion in new taxes and fees — adding higher income tax brackets, a surcharge on certain capital gains, and an expanded sales tax on some services.
Moore signed the FY2027 budget in April 2026 without new tax increases, closing a $1.5 billion gap through cuts and fund transfers. But the structural problems persist. The Department of Legislative Services projects the deficit will reach $2.3 billion in FY2028, $3.1 billion in FY2029, and $4 billion by FY2030.
Senate Minority Leader Stephen Hershey called the FY2027 budget “an election-year budget that does nothing more than meet the constitution’s requirement to balance it,” noting it leaves in place the technology tax and provides no meaningful relief for working Marylanders.
Maryland currently ranks seventh nationally in total tax burden as a share of personal income, according to WalletHub’s 2026 analysis. Income taxes alone rank third in the country, at 4.28 percent of personal income. A household earning $100,000 pays roughly $9,700 in combined state and local taxes under that calculation.
What the Data Does — and Doesn’t — Show
The MoneyLion analysis measures relative purchasing power within a state — not absolute hardship. A $100,000 earner in Maryland is not poor. They are, by definition, in the bottom third of the middle class as measured against their neighbors, which is a different and more precise claim.
The ranking also reflects something other than tax policy alone. Maryland’s high median household income — driven in part by the concentration of federal workers, contractors, and tech-sector employment in the Washington metro corridor — pushes income thresholds upward. High-wage states tend to have higher costs. That dynamic exists in Massachusetts, New Jersey, Hawaii, and California as well.
But “high wages drive up thresholds” is not a complete explanation when residents are voting with their feet. The Comptroller’s own data shows that the people leaving Maryland are not low-wage workers priced out of housing. They are working-age, middle-class households making a calculation about where their dollar goes further.
The housing shortage is the Comptroller’s primary diagnosis: Maryland is currently short roughly 100,000 housing units, with a projected need to build nearly 600,000 additional units by 2045 to keep pace with demand. Between 2000 and 2022, the share of Maryland households that could afford the median-priced home fell by more than 25 percentage points, from 75 percent to under 50 percent.
The Political Framing Is Getting Ahead of the Data
The MoneyLion data has already entered Maryland’s campaign cycle. A Facebook post from a local legislative candidate circulating this week used the rankings to argue that “the democratic stronghold and super majority is destroying Maryland in real time.”
The underlying data is real. Some of the political framing around it is not.
The post claims that, with the exception of Utah and Alaska, every state on the list is Democrat-run. That is not accurate. New Hampshire, ranked sixth nationally with a lower-middle-class ceiling of $110,869, has a Republican governor, Kelly Ayotte. Though both their senators are Democrats. The remaining ten states on the list — including Virginia, whose new Democratic Governor Abigail Spanberger took office in January 2026 — are led by Democrats. The list does heavily skew toward higher-cost, blue-leaning states, but the partisan framing overstates the case.
More importantly, the affordability crisis documented here is not a recent partisan development. The domestic outmigration trend predates the Moore administration and spans more than a decade of governance. Maryland’s structural fiscal problems were present before the $1.68 billion FY2026 tax package and will persist after the FY2027 election-year budget freeze.
The question for voters and policymakers is not which party owns the problem. It is whether any serious plan exists to address the housing supply shortage, stabilize the structural deficit, and stop the outmigration of the working-age residents the state’s tax base depends on.
The data available right now does not answer that question. It only makes clearer how urgent it has become.
SOURCES
MoneyLion (2025). “$100K qualifies as lower-middle class in 12 states.” Analysis using 2024 U.S. Census Bureau data and Pew Research Center methodology. Reported by The Hill, Yahoo Finance, and others. Published late April/May 2026.
Maryland Comptroller’s Office (Oct. 2025). “Housing & the Economy” — 78-page economic analysis on domestic outmigration, housing shortage, and fiscal impact. Authored under Comptroller Brooke Lierman.
Maryland Matters (May 2025). “Moore signs fiscal 2026 budget with tax increases into law.” Covers $1.68B tax-and-fee package closing $3.3B structural deficit.
Maryland Matters (Apr. 2026). “Moore, legislative leaders sign $70.8 billion budget into law.” FY2027 budget signed without new taxes or fees; Hershey quote.
Southern Maryland Chronicle (Apr. 2026). “Moore Signs FY2027 Budget Amid 7th-Highest Tax Load.” WalletHub 2026 tax burden rankings; income tax third nationally.
Fox Baltimore / Spotlight on Maryland (May 2026). “Gov. Wes Moore dodges questions, touts surplus as billion-dollar deficits grow.” Structural deficit projections from DLS FY2026 briefing.
ConsumerAffairs (2025). Maryland migration statistics: 198,764 outmigrants vs. 162,674 inbound in 2023.
WalletHub (2026). State and local tax burden rankings. Maryland 7th nationally, 9.70% of personal income.
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