December 19, 2025
The 2025 Baltimore Area Survey (BAS) is the third annual survey that helps us to understand the experiences and perceptions of residents living in Baltimore City and Baltimore County. With this third installment, we have the ability to start marking trends that we see across years and to measure how residents experience economic, political, and social changes in the region. In the past year, these have included substantial changes to the federal government—a major source of employment in the region—and the effort to rebuild the Key Bridge. Complementing these major changes, we have also tracked changes to the experiences of everyday living by measuring changes to food and transportation insecurity in the region.
The 2025 survey focuses on four central themes:
- Neighborhoods and schools
- Regional economic outlook
- Perceptions of government
- Food and transportation insecurity
Key Findings
Neighborhood safety improves
More survey respondents felt their personal safety had improved and fewer felt their safety had gotten worse than in the previous two years. About one in five area residents felt their safety had improved in 2025, up from one in eight in 2023.
Job security and job market concerns are heightened
- More than a third of employed residents worried about losing their jobs.
- Just under half of all employed residents worried about finding a job as good as their current one, compared to a third of employed residents two years ago.
- Nearly half of residents who experienced high transportation insecurity worried that the lack of reliable transportation would severely hinder a job search.
Economic anxiety is high
More than 55% of survey respondents felt the local economy was getting worse, and almost 70% said the United States economy was getting worse.
Trust in government declines
- Baltimore-area residents have lost more trust in the federal government than in state or local governments. Compared to last year, the percent of people who would never trust the federal government to do what is right increased by 24 points—a number two times higher than the increase in people who feel the same way about state and local governments.
- Residents in the city and county showed similar levels of satisfaction with public transit, schools, policing and sanitation in 2024 and 2025, indicating that satisfaction with government services remained steady even as trust wanes.
Food and transportation insecurity rise
- Nearly half of Baltimore city residents were food insecure this year, and more than half of those people were very food insecure based on a measure defined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. More than 30% of county residents experienced food insecurity.
- Black Baltimore-area residents experienced the sharpest increase in food insecurity. In 2025, nearly 58% of Black residents were food insecure, compared to 38% in 2024 and 54% in 2023.
- The poorest households in the Baltimore area experienced the highest levels of food and transportation insecurity. For households making less than $30,000 a year, roughly 75% experienced food insecurity and 60% experienced transportation insecurity.