BALTIMORE (Map, News) - Employment at Maryland’s nonprofit organizations grew more than twice as fast as private sector employment between 1995 and 2005, according to a Johns Hopkins University study released Monday.

During that decade, nonprofit employment statewide grew by 36 percent, compared with a 15.3 percent increase in the for-profit sector, according to the study, conducted by Johns Hopkins’ Center for Civil Society Studies.

“There are lots of reasons for it,” said Lester Salamon, the center’s director and a co-author of the study. “One of them is the change in the structure of the economy. Service industries are growing faster than manufacturing — and nonprofits are in the service sector and getting a boost.”

In 2005, the most recent year covered by the report, the job growth rate for nonprofits was more than three times that of for-profit firms from the year before, a 2 percent increase for nonprofits compared with 0.6 percent in the for-profit sector that year.

The increase brought the state’s nonprofit work force to 237,246 jobs at the end of 2005, totaling $9.9 billion in wages, more than 8 percent of the state’s total payroll.

Some of those workers may be funneled into the local nonprofit industry by local colleges, many of which have undergraduate and graduate programs in nonprofit work, said Nancy Hall, senior adviser with the Maryland Association of Nonprofit Organizations.

From 2004 to 2005, employment in nonprofits dealing with arts, entertainment and recreation grew by 8.9 percent, according to the study, followed by nursing and residential care at 3 percent, professional and scientific services with 2.8 percent, and hospitals with 2.4 percent.

Melanie Styles, program officer for work force development with the Abell Foundation, said the growth in arts and entertainment could be a positive indicator for Baltimore.

“I would think that would bode well for the city, in its efforts to boost economic development,” she said, “with Station North [Arts and Entertainment District] and groups like that supporting the city.”

Salamon said government action could put the brakes on nonprofit growth, but with Medicare and Medicaid unlikely to shrink anytime soon, that portion of the sector would continue to grow.

“We’re going to continue seeing the growth,” Hall said. “Nonprofits in Maryland are just becoming a larger and larger part of the economy, and we’re finally able to document that.”

acahall@baltimoreexaminer.com