PORTLAND, Maine — Things are looking up from 2007. In a relatively slow economic recovery, a tightening Maine labor market in 2015 prompted the first perceptible leap in wages, various indicators are up and the price of gasoline to fuel summer travel remains way down, to boot.
Within all of that, though, there’s good news and bad news (one simple example, travel is less expensive, but the turnpike’s going to be wicked packed).
Within the job market, that’s true, too. Since the recession, some industries have suffered more than others. And some of those industries, like paper manufacturing, paid relatively well.
Among 90 different industries employing more than 100 people at some point from 2007 to 2015, paper suffered some of the steepest losses while paying some of the highest average wages among Maine industries, according to a Bangor Daily News analysis of federal job data.
That’s not been the story across manufacturing since 2007, and it’s not the hardest-hit sector overall.
Paper making is joined by industries like chemical manufacturing, where employment has been on the rise and the average weekly wage is about $200 more per week than paper.
In general, the parts of the manufacturing sector that have grown don’t deal with raw materials, but making transportation equipment, machinery or chemicals. Industries like wood product manufacturing have fallen, but so has electronics and appliance manufacturing.
Construction industries last year remained far below 2007 as well, with wages right near the center for industries in the state.
Explore the changes in payroll employment from 2007 to 2015 in the chart below. Click a sector, at right, to highlight industries within that have gained or lost jobs and the average weekly wage in that industry for 2015. Clicking an industry will show a link to get more information about that specific sector and what types of jobs it includes.
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Industry-level figures show some of those gains have come in relatively low-wage leisure and hospitality industries, like gambling and amusements and food service and drinking businesses.
That year is a good milestone, for that reason, in assessing changes in Maine’s economy, but it’s far from the only event influencing changes. Some of the same technological changes delivering blows to the paper industry have affected the business of this newspaper, broadcasters and others in the information sector.
Collectively, that sector — including publishing, data processing and hosting, and motion picture and sound recording — faced the steepest collective employment cuts after the recession, with no industry category falling by less than 15 percent.
Among some of the state’s larger sectors, professional and business services, education and health services and leisure and hospitality jobs have experienced the strongest growth.
Another bright sector is natural resources, where five of six industries have posted employment gains, with loggers and foresters as the exception. That industry has faced a steadily dwindling market for softwood species due to mill closures, and pressure on the biomass industry from low oil prices also poses a threat to wood markets.
Other natural resource industries that are relatively small employers, such as nonmetallic mining and quarrying, crop production and fishing, last year posted gains over 2007.
Overall, Maine closed out 2015 with still fewer jobs than in December 2007, when the recession began. In April, Maine jobs were still down 1.3 percent from that time, up from a drop of nearly 5 percent in the pit of the recession, in 2010. That was about 30,500 nonfarm payroll jobs.
For payroll jobs, the service sector fueled much of the job recovery. The state’s much smaller group of jobs producing goods remained last year about 11 percent lower than the average for 2007.
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While goods-producing industries have lost jobs since the recession, those industries had a second year of growth in 2015.
Still, Maine Department of Labor projections of industries most poised to grow between 2012 to 2022 show many of the same service industries that have shown the most promise since 2007.
Use the search features below to explore the industry-level employment changes and wage data for 90 industries in Maine.
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