Indicator 60: Employment

 

Why This Is Important

These figures represent full- and part-time annual average employment, not including farm workers or self-employed people. This is an indicator of the number of jobs in Maine, unlike the unemployment rate, which is a measure of how many people are out of work.

While this indicator has limitations and does not address many employment issues, such as multiple job holdings and the quality of jobs, it does provide a fundamental measure of the State of Maine’s economy and is widely recognized as such.

 

Where We Stand

Maine’s total employment grew an average of 1.4% annually over the last seven years.
From 2003 to 2004, it grew 1.2 %. The pace of growth has exceeded New England and U.S. average job growth for the last seven years. However, the composition of jobs in Maine is changing. From 1990 to 2004, Maine lost 30,000 manufacturing jobs. From 2003 to 2004, while all other sectors grew, manufacturing jobs declined by 1.6%. Most of the job growth has been occurring in the non-manufacturing sector (including mining, wholesale and retail trade, construction, services, finance, insurance, real estate, transportation, communications and public utilities). For example, healthcare and social assistance jobs increased by 37,000 between 1990 and 2004. In addition, while government jobs grew an average of 1.2% annually during this same time period, their percentage of total employment has declined.

 

Data Sources and Context

Data for this indicator comes from the Maine Economic Growth Council’s Measures of
Growth in Focus 2006; summary and analysis of data in that publication is done by the Maine Development Foundation. For this measure, the Foundation analyzed data from the Maine Department of Labor, Division of Labor Market Information Services, in cooperation with the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Measures of Growth in Focus 2006 is available on-line at http://www.mdf.org/megc.