PORTLAND, Maine — Maine’s unemployment rate dropped to 5 percent in preliminary estimates for February, which would be the lowest level since April 2008.
The preliminary figures show a sharp decline in recent months, but eventual revisions to those estimates will likely show a less dramatic decrease in the unemployment rate for the month, according to the Maine Department of Labor.
The latest figures estimate 34,386 Mainers who wanted work were unable to find a job in February, down from 41,642 one year prior.
The latest figures come with a more accurate picture of the unemployment rate in 2014, as those year’s estimates were revised using other data earlier this month. Those revisions show Maine’s seasonally adjusted jobless rate dropped from 6 percent in January to 5.5 percent in December.
That is, the revised figures show a decrease of 0.5 percentage points for the entire year, the same as the preliminary estimates show just for January and February.
That’s likely not because the jobs picture improved in January and February as much as during all of 2014, but due to “directional trends” that Glenn Mills, chief economist at the Department of Labor’s Center for Workforce Research and Information wrote are driven by the method for making seasonal adjustments to the data “and many not indicate a change in underlying workforce conditions.”
For that reason, month-to-month changes in the employment rate are less telling than comparisons over a year or longer, a term at which the jobless rate appears on the mend.
The estimate of total payroll jobs for February was up 300 from one year ago, reflecting a continued trend of a decline in government jobs and an increase in private sector jobs, with the largest job gains in professional and business services.
Maine’s unemployment rate estimate for February was lower than the national rate of 5.5 percent, which was down from 6.7 percent one year earlier. The average jobless rate for the New England states was 5.3 percent. Maine’s was lower than in Connecticut (6.4 percent) and Rhode Island (6.3 percent) and higher than Massachusetts (4.9 percent), and Vermont and New Hampshire (both at 3.9 percent).
In estimates not adjusted for seasonal changes, Bangor’s unemployment rate was at 5.4 percent, below the unadjusted state average of 6 percent. The unadjusted rate for the Greater Portland region was 4.7 percent and for Lewiston-Auburn, 5.6 percent.