Bel Air, Maryland

Unemployment of 3.5% is lower than 84% of the 3,904 measured US cities.

Employment grew 0.4% over the past year, to 138,174 employed residents.

43% of adults hold a four-year degree, higher than 84% of measured US cities.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes city-level labor data only for places of 25,000 or more. This is the figure for Harford County, MD, which contains this city.

Median rent of $1,492 takes 24% of median household income, below the 30% threshold at which a household is considered cost-burdened.

A median home costs 4.3 times median household income here, above the historic benchmark of about three times income.

Both affordability measures come from the same ACS release as the income they are compared with, so the comparison is like for like. They describe housing cost against local earnings and are not a cost-of-living index — transport, groceries, healthcare, insurance and taxes are not included, and a place can look affordable here and still be expensive to live in for reasons this does not capture.

Population has fallen 3% since 2020, reaching 10,395 in 2024.

Permitting has turned upward after moving the other way the year before.

95% of recently permitted units are in buildings of five or more homes, so new supply is concentrated in apartments and condominiums rather than detached houses.

At 5.7 permitted units per 1,000 residents, building activity is above the median for measured US cities.

6 of the twelve months have a normal average temperature between 55°F and 80°F. July averages a high of 86°F and January a low of 25°F.

Normal annual precipitation is 47.1 inches.

Climate figures are thirty-year normals, not current conditions. They describe what a typical year looks like rather than what the weather is doing today.

The hazards accounting for most of this area's expected annual loss are hurricane, earthquake and drought.

Hazard ratings are AreaProfile calculations derived from the FEMA National Risk Index v1.20.0 (December 2025). FEMA publishes at county level. City values are the population-weighted mean of the counties the city overlaps, using AreaProfile place-to-county land-area weights. FEMA does not endorse this presentation. Higher physical resilience means lower exposure.

Three things people look for are missing from every AreaProfile page, and each is missing for a reason rather than by oversight. The Area Score is calculated without them and the weighting is documented on the methodology page.

Crime

The FBI’s Crime Data Explorer is the only source with national coverage and a published method, and it requires an API key AreaProfile does not hold. Arrest counts, news volume and commercial “safety scores” are not substituted in the meantime. Reported crime is also easy to misread: agency participation varies year to year, and a city that draws a large daytime workforce carries incidents its residents did not generate.

Taxes

No tax dataset has met the source admission test for coverage, transparent methodology and update cadence. Nothing here is individualized tax advice.

Full cost of living

No public source publishes one with national coverage and a documented method. Housing affordability above is computed from published rent, price and income, and excludes transport, groceries, healthcare, insurance and taxes — commuting cost in particular tends to offset suburban housing savings.

5 major airports lie within 100 miles, the nearest 30 miles away.

Airport identity, position and runway data come from the FAA. “Major airport” is an AreaProfile classification — a public-use civil airport with a paved runway of at least 8,000 feet — not an FAA hub designation. Distances are straight-line, not driving distance.

Every city here is measured on the same scale from the same source releases, so the comparison is like for like. A higher Area Score reflects AreaProfile’s standardized weighting rather than a judgment about which is the better place to live.

Put Bel Air side by side with a similar place.

Profile recalculated August 30, 2026. Recalculation is not the same as new source data — each figure above shows the period its source actually covers. Read the full methodology or browse every source.