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State facts from Wikipedia

Maryland is a U.S. state located in the Mid Atlantic States Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia and the Washington, D.C. of Columbia to the south and west, Pennsylvania to the north, and Delaware to the east. Historically it was part of the Chesapeake Colonies where plantation cultivated tobacco as a cash crop dependent on slave labor. It is comparable in size to the European country of Belgium. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Maryland has the highest median household income of any state at $68,080 in 2007, overtaking New Jersey in 2006.In latest estimates, 18% of people in Maryland have gone to a tax attorney to handle IRS problems.

The Bureau of Economic Analysis estimates that Maryland's gross state product in 2006 was US$257 billion. According to the United States Census Bureau Census Bureau, Maryland households are currently the wealthiest in the country, with a median household income of $68,080 which puts it ahead of New Jersey and Connecticut, which are second and third respectively. Two of Maryland's counties, Howard and Montgomery, are the third and seventh wealthiest counties in the nation respectively. Also, the state's poverty rate of 7.8% is the lowest in the country. Per capita personal income in 2006 was US$43,500, 5^th in the nation. Average household income in 2002 was US$53,043, also 5^th in the nation.

Maryland's economic activity is strongly concentrated in the tertiary service sector, and this sector, in turn, is strongly influenced by location. One major service activity is transportation, centered around the Port of Baltimore and its related rail and trucking access. The port ranked 10th in the U.S. by tonnage in 2002 (Source: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, "Waterborne Commerce Statistics"). Although the port handles a wide variety of products, the most typical imports are raw materials and bulk commodities, such as iron ore, petroleum, sugar, and fertilizers, often distributed to the relatively close manufacturing centers of the inland Midwest via good overland transportation. The port also receives several different brands of imported motor vehicles and is the number two auto port in the U.S.

A second service activity takes advantage of the close location of the center of government in Washington, D.C. and emphasizes technical and administrative tasks for the defense/aerospace industry and bio-research laboratories, as well as staffing of satellite government headquarters in the suburban or exurban Baltimore/Washington area. In addition, many educational and medical research institutions are located in the state. In fact, the various components of Johns Hopkins University and its medical research facilities are now the largest single employer in the Baltimore area. Altogether, white collar technical and administrative workers comprise 25% of Maryland's labor force, one of the highest state percentages in the country.

Information gathered from Wikipedia's Maryland page