BP Solar has shut down operations at its silicon wafer manufacturing plant in Frederick, eliminating 320 Maryland manufacturing jobs there.

According to WashingtonBizJournals, the company blames falling prices for solar products and high costs of manufacturing components itself. BP Solar began outsourcing production operations last year. It says the decision has cut costs by more than 45 percent.

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Spending cuts in the state budget are expected to eliminate thousands of Virginia jobs, a new study suggests (click here).

The study says that Virginia will lose 37,000 jobs over the next two years.

The report, released Wednesday by the Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis, also indicates that the ripple effects of a thinning work force could slow an economic recovery.

According to HamptonRoads.com, the analysis by the public-policy think tank comes less than two weeks after the General Assembly adopted a biennial budget that overcame a more than $4 billion shortfall partly through deep funding cuts to education and health programs.

“Our lawmakers have refused to acknowledge that the cuts that they’ve included in the budget are going to result in substantial job losses, not gains,” Michael Cassidy, the institute’s executive director, said during a Wednesday news conference.

“At a time when Virginians need ladders to get ourselves out of this deep economic hole that we are in, our lawmakers are handing out shovels and digging the hole even deeper,” he said.

Cassidy said the projected job losses would exceed the number of people currently unemployed in Virginia Beach, Richmond, Danville, Arlington County and Charlottesville combined.

They also would “dwarf the gains that have been projected for various economic development initiatives, business tax breaks and credits.”

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Maryland is expected to face shortages of workers to fill jobs requiring more than a high school diploma but less than a college degree - mid-skill jobs in Maryland that will make up the biggest share of openings over the next several years, according to a national study.

According to the Baltimore Sun, Maryland has a widening gap between work force credentials and the so-called “middle skills” needed for jobs that will account for 42 percent of all openings by 2016, reported the Washington-based National Skills Coalition, a worker training advocacy group.

The coalition projects more than 434,000 job openings in that category by then.

So what jobs classify as middle skill jobs? They are police officers, firefighters, medical technicians and therapists, electricians and mechanics. Nearly half of the jobs in Maryland are classified as “middle skill,” but just over one-third of Maryland workers likely have the minimum credentials to fill them, the report said.

The coalition has reported similar findings in each of the handful of states it has studied since 2007, when it released a national study that mirrored training versus job growth patterns.

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Forbes has said in a recent article that Washington, D.C. is emerging from the recession better than any city in the U.S., citing evidence that jobs in Washington are growing quickly.

Washington, D.C. has been in the news for many reasons lately, after it was pummeled by two snow storms and as the location for the sparring match between Republicans and Democrats over healthcare. But there are other reasons the city has been spotlighted.

The city has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country, at 6.2%, and its output amounts to $362.3 billion, more than three times the average for the country’s largest cities.

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