Maine unemployment numbers improve in September, but job gains are slowing
Maine’s unemployment rate continued to decline in September, reaching 6.1%, the lowest level since the start of the pandemic and down from 6.9% in August — later revised to 7% — the state Department of Labor reported Tuesday.
The rate has been volatile since COVID-19 led to the shuttering of countless businesses and then resurgences in some sectors of the economy, often spurred by government relief.
But while unemployment decreased in September, Maine’s pace of job creation also slowed to its lowest rate since May, with a net addition of only 4,700 nonfarm jobs, seasonally adjusted data show.
Total nonfarm jobs in Maine totaled 586,700, with the private sector adding 7,900 of them, primarily in the manufacturing, leisure and hospitality, retail, and professional and business service sectors. The gain in manufacturing jobs was primarily due to the end of a strike by the machinists union at Bath Iron Works.
However, the gains were offset by a decrease of 3,200 public sector jobs, mostly because seasonal hiring in public education was lighter than usual as the school year got off to a halting start.
As in recent months, the Labor Department cautioned that Maine’s unemployment rate underestimates job displacement, since public health concerns and related factors prevent many jobless people from seeking or being available to work, as they normally would.
Those who were not available or did not engage in work search are not counted as unemployed. If labor force participation was as high as it was in February, before the pandemic, and jobless Mainers were classified correctly, the state’s unemployment rate would have been 9.2% in September, the Labor Department said in a news release.
Other rates
The U.S. unemployment rate also fell modestly in September, decreasing from 8.4% in August to 7.9%.
Maine’s unemployment rate placed it in the middle of those across New England, where joblessness levels were: 7.8% in Connecticut; 9.6%, Massachusetts; 6%, New Hampshire; 10.5%, Rhode Island; and 4.2%, Vermont.
Within Maine, unemployment rates that were not seasonally adjusted ranged from a high in Oxford County of 7.1% to Sagadahoc County’s rate of 4.5%.
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