On jobs, compare your community with the neighbors

The Maine Department of Labor has published a new look at annual unemployment data, letting users zero in on a specific area of the state and its neighboring communities.

Follow the steps in the interactive map below to see annual unemployment rates for specific communities and the surrounding areas. 

For reference, the statewide average unemployment rate for 2015 was 4.4 percent, which serves as the middle point in color-coding the towns below. Red represents a rate higher than 4.4 percent, gray represents a rate at or near 4.4 percent and green represents a lower rate.

The view from the DOL’s Center for Workforce Research and Information gives a new perspective on unemployment data by region, allowing for comparison of a given town’s employment dynamics with communities within a certain radius. I modified that view just a little for this blog.

The DOL released the new look at unemployment numbers just before the latest monthly release of unemployment figures, showing Maine’s unemployment rate ticking back up slightly, to 3.5 percent.

You can explore the view above at the CWRI site and also see a wide array of other visualizations on Maine’s economy and workforce that they produce and maintain regularly.

Darren Fishell

About Darren Fishell

Darren is a Portland-based reporter for the Bangor Daily News writing about the Maine economy and business. He's interested in putting economic data in context and finding the stories behind the numbers.