[Updated] Friday Chart: Employment Growth by Governor

THE below graph is an index of employment growth for Maine’s current and previous four governors through their first 39 months in office.

(click image to enlarge)

Maine Employment

 ****In response to some comments I read on Friday, here is a graph indexing employment growth by governor through their first 39 months in office (I haven’t had time to add the recently released figures) against national employment growth over the same time periods.  

(click image to enlarge)

Maine Employment Index

 

A few other notes.

  • What you can extrapolate from such graphs is limited, and one cannot construct a graph to encapsulate all nuances found within an economy (i.e., population growth, labor growth, cyclical downturns, structural shifts, wages, hours, etc.)
  • I haven’t been able to find data that parses out private and public sector employment for prior to 1990.  However, what I did find (see here)does show a large uptick in public sector employment between 1998 and 2003, with it leveling off through 2010 and then declining to 2000 levels.  However, these are only nominal figures, and do not account for population, labor force, and employment growth over the same time periods
  • Index (with 100=the first month a governor) is plotted along the y-axis, months along the x-axis.
  • Lastly, I understand the employment derives from the CPS, which is more volatile (and thus perhaps less reliable) than the payroll figures.  Also, there might be better indicators to chart.  Again, no one chart will encapsulate all economic nuances, and I working on building my data sets slowly.
John Haskell

About John Haskell

John graduated from the University of Southern Maine with a degree in Political Science, and from the University of Maine School of Law. He has worked in both the public and private sectors, and currently, works with a small business services company in the Mid-Coast area.