The year in Maine

BUSINESSES
Maine restaurants and hotels had a record-breaking year in 2016, bringing in more than $3.6 billion in combined sales, according to estimates from the Maine Restaurant Association and Maine Innkeepers Association. Overall, lodging and restaurant sales rose 7 percent from 2015

ECOLOGY & FARMS
Maine has 8174 farms (Up fro 7196 in 2002)
Since 2006, the number of small farms has increased by 13%.
Nearly 40% of Maine’s farmers are under age 34.
Agricultural sales have risen by 24 percent since 2007. - Press Herald 2017


EDUCATION
Maine has least educated workforce in New England 2017

EMPLOYMENT
The Maine Department of Labor said the November [2017] rate is down slightly from 3.5 percent for October and 3.8 percent from a year ago. It is the 26th consecutive month that the unemployment rate has been below 4 percent.

FOOD
Beacon-A report from the US Department of Agriculture found that while the nation as a whole has continued to make progress against hunger, over the last year Maine has dropped from 9th worst in the country to 7th worst in food insecurity. Over the past decade, food insecurity in Maine has increased by 27%. Maine ranks even worse, third in the country, for the percentages of households falling into the even-more dire category of “very low food security.” Food insecurity in Maine is now 25% worse than the national average, with 16.4% of households are food insecure compared to 13% nationally

HEALTH
Sun Journal - New U.S. Census Bureau figures show that the number of Maine residents without health insurance stayed steady from 2015 to 2016. According to a new federal report released Tuesday , Maine's uninsured rate of 8.6 percent is a drop from 11.2 percent in 2013. About 106,000 Mainer residents lacked health insurance last year, down from 147,000 residents in 2015

HOUSING
The Maine Association of Realtors says sales of single-family existing homes increased 11.5 percent in November 2017 compared to a year earlier. According to an association report, 1,576 homes were sold in Maine in November. The median home sales price also increased in Maine over the past year by 4.2 percent, to $200,000.


MONEY & WORK
Maine’s economy grew sluggishly in the final three months of 2016, expanding just 0.7 percent, making Maine the slowest-growing state in New England and 43rd nationally. Figures from the Bureau of Economic Analysis suggest that contractions in real estate, rental and leasing activity, along with a decline manufacturing of non-durable goods – items expected to last less than three years – were the biggest drags on the state’s economy.

TOURISM
Press Herald - Maine’s tourism industry saw its revenue increase for the fourth straight year in 2016, growing to $6 billion, a 6 percent bump over 2015. The 35.8 million visitors who fueled the growth included a resurgence of Canadian vacationers... Mid-Atlantic metropolitan areas such as New York City, Baltimore, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., have become a rich vein for Maine tourism, particularly for first-time visitors who tend to stay longer and spend more money. The state hosted about 5 million first-time visitors in 2016, half a million more than in 2015.

TRANSPORTATION
MPBN - A report focusing on rural roadways finds almost one 1 of 5 in Maine in poor condition and around 1 in 6 rural bridges to be structurally deficient.

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