Navy shipyard in Kittery adds record-high boost to region's economy
Photo / William Hall
Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, pictured here from the Piscataqua River, employed nearly 7,500 people last year, including roughly 4,200 Mainers.
Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, the Kittery facility that repairs and services the U.S. submarine fleet, injected a record-high $1.54 billion into the region's economy last year.
That finding comes from an annual report whose latest edition was released Wednesday by the Seacoast Shipyard Association, a local booster group. The report uses Defense Department data on civilian payroll, military payroll, and the costs of purchases and contracted services to estimate the yard's economic impact each year.
The 2023 total is up nearly 5.5% from the 2022 figure of $1.46 billion, which at the time was the greatest annual economic impact PNSY had ever recorded. The 2022 amount represented a 10.2% increase above the previous year's impact of roughly $1.32 billion.
The shipyard, a sprawling, 300-acre complex on Seavey Island in the Piscataqua River, employed 7,469 civilians in 2023. That's about 100 more workers than in 2022. The 2023 civilian payroll totaled $716.2 million, an increase of 8% from the 2022 total of $663.5 million.
More than half of last year's civilian workers, 4,194, lived in Maine and accounted for a payroll of $402.1 million. Another 2,905 workers were from New Hampshire and 176 came from Massachusetts. Nearly 200 workers came from outside the three states.
The military payroll at PNSY last year was $34.2 million, the lowest level in seven years.
Portsmouth Naval Shipyard has steadily increased civilian employment during that time, adding more than 1,000 workers since 2017. But like most employers in the region, the yard has also struggled to fill jobs. The civilian workforce peaked in 2020 at 7,639.
As in 2022, the Maine community with the greatest number of civilian employees last year was Sanford. During 2023, 520 city residents earned paychecks at the yard, adding up to a payroll of $45.9 million.
In New Hampshire, Rochester was home to about the same number of PNSY workers. Kittery, Berwick and Dover, N.H., were also popular home towns, each with more than 400 residents employed at the yard.
However, dozens of employees came from more distant communities including Brunswick, New Gloucester and Portland.
Portsmouth Naval Shipyard is one of four such Navy-operated facilities in the country and the second-oldest, founded in 1800.
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