PORTLAND, Maine — Maine’s unemployment rate dipped again in February, continuing to approach levels last hit around the turn of the millennium.
The estimate dipped again in February, to 3.6 percent, on a higher estimate of people employed and a largely unchanged estimate of the state’s total workforce.
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Month-to-month changes in the rate or employment estimates don’t necessarily reflect changes in the economy but also include some variation because of how the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics arrives at the estimate.
That involves taking household survey information and expanding those results to reflect a broader group of people.
Compared with revised employment figures from one year ago, the latest estimates indicate about 8,400 fewer people are out of work, a drop entirely because of an estimated decline in the number of people who either are working or looking for work.
The latest estimates reflect a decrease in the labor force of about 11,600 for the year, alongside a decrease in employment of 3,200. Those survey-based estimates conflict with employment estimates based on employer payrolls, which put employment up about by about 5,800 jobs over the year.
Glenn Mills, chief economist for the Maine Department of Labor’s Center for Workforce Research and Information, said in a previous interview that he doubts the relatively stagnant job growth estimated by household survey data, which is used to determine the unemployment rate.
Mills told the Legislature’s revenue forecasting committee in January that the survey and payroll measures tend to go in different directions during economic recovery periods.
Maine’s jobless rate dipped further below the national rate of 4.9 percent for February and was among the lowest in New England. Maine’s rate was higher than New Hampshire (2.7 percent) and Vermont (3.4 percent) but was lower than Massachusetts (4.5 percent), Rhode Island (5.4 percent) and Connecticut (5.5 percent).