🔒Maine counties see negative business growth, average new building permits

York County is doing better than other Maine counties in business growth, though all business growth in the state was in the red, according to a new study by SmartAsset, a financial modeling and technology company based in New York.

Using data from the U.S. Census Bureau County Business Patterns Survey, U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S. Census Bureau Building Permits Survey and Bloomberg, SmartAsset found a negative 0.9% business growth in York County. It also found York had a $30 million positive growth in gross domestic product, 6.1 new building permits per 1,000 homes and $2,558 in municipal bonds per capita.

The result for York was a 29.42 incoming investment index measurement, which combines the four factors.

“York is the No. 1 county in Maine and the 625th county (out of 1,993) in the country when it comes to incoming investments,” A.J. Smith, managing editor and vice president of content strategy at SmartAsset, wrote in an emailed response to questions by Mainebiz. Smith also oversaw the study.

“This was pretty in line with New Hampshire and a bit better than Vermont,” Smith noted. “The places with the most incoming investments nationwide tended to be in the upper Midwest. Counties in North Dakota and Minnesota did very well in our study. While all of the Maine counties in the top 10 saw negative business growth, the average nationwide growth was only 0.4%.”

Smith also said that the top three Maine counties — York, Cumberland and Sagadahoc — were above average with new building permits.

SmartAsset noted that its study aimed to find places across the United States getting the most incoming investments in business, real estate, government and the local economy as a whole. It looked at business establishment growth, GDP growth, new building permits and municipal bond investment.

The study looked at the change in the number of businesses that were established in each county over a two-year period, noting that the number indicates whether or not people are starting new businesses in the county.

For GDP growth, it used inflation-adjusted real growth in the local economy.

It also looked at growth in the development and investment in residential real estate by calculating the number of new building permits per 1,000 homes.

To determine the investment in municipal bonds, it took the average municipal bonds raised by a county over the last five years and divided that number by its population.

Each county in the study was weighed using the four factors, which counted equally. The combined scores were used to create an index, with the county with the most investments assigned a value of 100 and the one with the least investment getting a zero.

Cumberland County followed York, with a negative 0.3% in business growth, $59 million in GDP growth, 5.4 new building permits per 1,000 homes, $4,038 in municipal bonds per capita. The incoming investment index, or the combined score, was 29.26.

Of the 10 Maine counties in the survey, Aroostook came in 10th with a negative 1.2% in business growth, $11 million in GDP growth, 2.2 new building permits per 1,000 homes, no municipal bonds per capita, and an incoming investment index of zero.

The other top 10 counties, in order of incoming investment index behind York and Cumberland were Sagadahoc, Hancock, Knox, Penobscot, Kennebec, Oxford, Androscoggin and, finally, Aroostook. The remaining Maine counties, all with a zero incoming investment index, are, in order: Lincoln, Piscataquis, Franklin, Somerset, Waldo and in last place, Washington.