Study: Maine's economic recovery lagging
Maine's economic recovery, particularly in terms of job growth, will continue to lag behind the rest of the country in 2013.
That's the assessment of Charles Colgan, a professor at the Muskie School of Public Service at the University of Southern Maine and the author of a segment on Maine's economic forecast that was included in a regional report released today at an economic conference in Rhode Island.
"The Maine economy has essentially been flat for the past three years, with only minimal job growth relative to the bottom of the recession," Colgan wrote in his 10-page report. "The main reason is that sectors that have shown growth in the U.S., such as manufacturing and professional and business services, have shown continued decline in Maine. ... Maine will be more than a year behind the U.S. in recovering employment to pre-recession levels."
Through the third quarter of 2012, he said, the U.S. economy has recovered 64% of the jobs lost at the peak of the recession, or about 5 million jobs. By comparison, Maine has only recovered 17%, or 5,000 jobs out of the 28,000 jobs that were lost.
The only sector that grew faster in Maine than the U.S. was retail employment. With the closing of the Hostess bakery in Biddeford leading to the loss of more than 370 jobs, Colgan said Maine's manufacturing sector "is very unlikely to return to pre-recession employment levels."
Other highlights of Colgan's report:
- Gross domestic product growth in Maine has only been 2% since the end of 2010.
- Mixed signals in the housing market, with median house prices slowly climbing but still below the high of $201,000 in April 2007. The $170,000 median price reported in September is up 11% from the low point of $152,500 in January 2009 but still 15% below the peak.
- Maine's population — which saw a 20% drop between 1990 and 2010 in the 18-to-34 age group — "will have to accelerate after 2016 if adequate labor is to be available for an expansionary period."
The other New England Economic Partnership economists reported that the region as a whole "will continue to experience slow growth and slow recovery of the jobs lost in the recent recession" due to the "continued weakness in global and U.S. economic conditions."
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