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Updated: April 18, 2022

Maine's unemployment rate falls to lowest level in two years

Ice cream shop with sign saying Closed at 3 because of labor shortage File Photo / Renee Cordes Maine's unemployment rate fell to 3.6% in March from 4.0% in February, as sectors including hospitality recover from sharp job losses at the start of the pandemic. Shown here is an ice-cream window in Castine last summer.
By Renee Cordes

Maine's unemployment rate fell to 3.6% in March, its lowest level in 24 months, the Maine Department of Labor said Friday.

That level is down from 4% in February and from 4.8% a year ago.

Some 24,800 people in Maine were unemployed in March. The 3.6% unemployment rate puts Maine on par with the U.S., whose unemployment rate dropped to 3.6% in March from 3.8% in February.

In March 2020, as the pandemic was first beginning to affect Maine, the state recorded an unemployment rate of 2.7%. Two months later, it had soared to 9.2%.

Last month, the number of nonfarm jobs in Maine increased by 3,600 to 638,700. The largest job gains were in professional and business services, retail trade and health care and social assistance.

In the three months through March, half of the job gains were in leisure and hospitality and in retail trade, as those sectors recover from some of the sharpest job losses at the start of the pandemic. 

More detailed data for February, not adjusted for seasonal factors, show that unemployment rates ranged from a low of 3.1% in Cumberland County to a high of 6.5% in Washington County, compared to an unadjusted statewide average for that month of 4.1%.

Among Maine's three metro areas, the unadjusted unemployment was below the state average for February in Portland-South Portland at 3.4% and Bangor at 3.7%, and close to the average in Lewiston-Auburn, at 3.9%.

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