Maine's arts and cultural nonprofits support more than 7,300 jobs, a University of Maine study finds
Economist Todd Gabe counted more than 1,400 libraries, museums, theaters, musical groups and historical societies in IRS data. They employ more than 5,600 people directly and account for an estimated $660 million in economic output.
Orono. Maine's nonprofit arts and cultural organizations support more than 7,300 jobs across the state, according to a study by Todd Gabe, an economist at the University of Maine, released in late October.
Mr. Gabe used Internal Revenue Service data to identify more than 1,400 such nonprofits in Maine, a group that includes libraries, museums, theaters, musical groups and historical societies. He estimates that they directly employ more than 5,600 people and pay them more than $125 million.
What the numbers count
The larger figure adds the jobs the organizations support through their purchases from suppliers and through the spending of their employees' households. Counted that way, the study estimates the nonprofits contribute $226 million in labor income and $660 million in economic output in Maine each year. The university says the estimates leave out what visitors spend at hotels, restaurants and stores when they come to a performance or an exhibition.
Most of the organizations are small. The Portland Press Herald, which reported the study, named among those it covers the Portland Museum of Art, the Bowdoin International Music Festival and the Penobscot Theatre Company in Bangor, along with small libraries and art galleries.
“Most of these organizations are quite small, but collectively, they are sizable in terms of their employment and their economic impact.”
Third in the nation by density
The study also finds that Maine has the third-highest concentration of nonprofit arts and cultural groups in the country, at 103 for every 100,000 residents, behind the District of Columbia and Vermont. Mr. Gabe told the newspaper that Maine has the second-highest number of libraries per resident in the United States and the third-highest number of nonprofit museums, theaters and historical preservation societies.
The study was paid for with a federal grant and carried out with input from the Cultural Alliance of Maine, a statewide group of arts and cultural organizations. Mr. Gabe has studied the state's creative economy since the early 2000s.
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