Maine's logging industry has a problem, according to a University of Maine study funded by the trade group Professional Logging Contractors of Maine.

"Using information from the Quarterly Census on Employment and Wages, in Maine the industry saw a 15% decline in total number of jobs, while the jobs in the industry nationally dropped 9%, between 2014 and 2021," the study said. That was with annual 2021 earnings of $65 thousand per job.

"In the last 3 years… about a third of the logging company has essentially walked away for a multitude of reasons, the suppressed market prices that they get paid for wasn't keeping up with inflation," Dana Doran, executive director of the Professional Logging Contractors of Maine, told Scripps News. "They couldn't hire people because other industries were able to pay more than what they were willing to pay. So, we've seen about a third of capacity and a third of the employment walk away within the past three years."