The state’s economic activity, a measure reflecting the current state of the economy, rose over the past 12 months, but slowed over the past three months, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia said Thursday.
Maine was one of only three U.S. states in which the economic activity, also called the coincident index, was negative for the three months to November. The other two states were Hawaii and North Dakota.
The index was positive in the remaining 47 U.S. states.
The index includes four economic indicators: nonfarm payroll employment, the unemployment rate, the average hours worked in manufacturing by production workers and wages and salaries.
The increase in Maine’s unemployment rate from 3.2 percent in August to 3.4 percent in November contributed to its negative rating on the index. The unemployment rate was 3.1 percent in November 2017, according to the Maine Department of Labor.
“In the three months to November, the coincident index for Maine decreased 0.6 percent. Payroll employment was unchanged, while the average hours worked in manufacturing increased over the past three months,” Daneil Mazone, a spokesperson for the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, said in an email to the Bangor Daily News.
“However, the unemployment rate [was] higher than that of three months ago,” she said. “The Maine coincident index is sensitive to the change in the state unemployment rate.”
Although the level of Maine’s unemployment rate is relatively lower than most of the U.S., the bank’s economic model does not take that into account, she said.
Overall, Maine’s economic activity as measured by the coincident index has increased 0.3 percent during the past 12 months.
The coincident index is released monthly a few days before the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics releases employment data for the 50 states.