At a glance:
- Between 2024-2025, household incomes in Maine generally rose faster than inflation and faster than the national average, but Mainers with the lowest incomes saw virtually no improvement
- A strong labor market and protections like a minimum wage that rises automatically with inflation are helping drive these gains
- Many key expenses remain unaffordable for large numbers of Mainers, especially health insurance and housing — the number of Mainers without health insurance rose in 2025
- Mainers will face additional problems in 2026 with elevated inflation and the end of heath care subsidies
On Thursday, the US Census Bureau released the 2025 data for its American Community Survey, the most comprehensive dataset on incomes, housing, and health insurance access at the national and state levels. In general, many Mainers are experiencing sustained income growth and low poverty rates, but with increased difficulty affording health care and housing. This is in line with other data sets which show continued struggles for large numbers of Americans.
Income growth for Mainers outpaces the nation again
Between 2024 and 2025, the typical Maine household income rose from just over $76,000 to almost $82,000 a year, an increase of 7%. This growth was faster than the national growth rate of 3.8%, and well above the 2.6% rate of inflation over the same time. What’s more, this above-inflation rate of income growth was present at all income levels, though for Mainers with the lowest household incomes, that growth was less than 1%.
Source: MECEP analysis of US Census Bureau, American Community Survey data
This continued a pattern of strong income growth for households in Maine with middle and upper incomes since the COVID-19 pandemic, driven by a strong labor market where workers are able to demand higher wages and switch to better-paying jobs more easily than in recent history. Because these gains are largely dependent on the labor market, households with the lowest incomes — whose members often struggle to obtain or maintain full-time work — have been largely left behind. Annual cost-of-living adjustments to Maine’s minimum wage and programs like Social Security prevent inflation from completely overwhelming them but only keep households treading water. Since 2019, Maine households in the bottom fifth of the income distribution (around $18,000 per year) have seen their real incomes decline by 1%.
It’s also worth noting that real income growth may slow in 2026. Between July 2025 and July 2026, weekly earnings in Maine increased by just 3.8%, even as the rate of inflation over the same period was 3.4%, driven by President Trump’s tariffs and Iran war.
Source: MECEP analysis of US Census Bureau, American Community Survey data
Poverty rates remain low, with big reductions for vulnerable groups
While there were no statistically significant changes to the official poverty rate between 2024 and 2025, that rate remained at historically low levels, with 9.9% of Mainers living below the official poverty line. Analysis of the more comprehensive supplemental poverty measure, released earlier this year, found the number of Mainers in poverty to be even lower, and Maine’s supplemental poverty rate of 6.4% between 2023 and 2025 was the lowest of any state in the country.
Over the longer term, Maine has made particular progress in reducing the number of children and people of color living in poverty. Among children, the official poverty rate has fallen from 18% between 2014-16 to 12% between 2023 and 2025. The official poverty rate for Black Mainers has more than halved from 44% between 2014-16 to 20% between 2023-2025, while rates for Latino and indigenous Mainers have also fallen sharply, as has the rate for Mainers from mixed racial backgrounds.
It’s worth remembering for all this improvement there are still tens of thousands of Mainers living in poverty, and even more just above the poverty line. The slight increase in poverty for older Mainers is also notable. In 2025, there were almost 136,000 people who could not afford even a basic cost of living (the poverty level for a family of two in 2025 was a little over $21,000 a year). While there has been significant income growth for numerous Mainers, many people remain in a struggle to survive.
Source: MECEP analysis of US Census Bureau, American Community Survey data
Source: MECEP analysis of US Census Bureau, American Community Survey data. Hispanic Mainers include those of any racial category.
Affordability of health care and housing remains difficult
Even with the general increase in household incomes, the ACS data also shows some clear warning signs for affordability in 2025. The number of Mainers without health insurance grew from 77,000 to 95,000, driven by an increase in the share of Mainers age 19 to 64 who lacked health insurance coverage. Within this age range, the share of the population without insurance rose from 7.9% to 10.3%, likely reflecting Mainers who dropped coverage because they could no longer afford it.
The picture is likely to be even worse in 2026, with the expiration of additional subsidies in the Affordable Care Act’s individual marketplace at the end of 2025. Data already shows thousands more Mainers dropped their health insurance this year as costs became unmanageable.
The ACS data release also shows housing costs continued to outpace inflation and incomes. Even though median household incomes increased by 7% between 2024 and 2025, typical costs for homeowners with a mortgage rose 9% and typical rents rose 10%, eating away at even Mainers’ relatively fast income growth.
National data shows other key costs are outpacing incomes for many Americans, including gasoline, electricity, and some food items. More comprehensive measures than the official poverty measure find almost half of all Mainers don’t have enough income to afford adequate food, housing, transportation, and medical and child care.
This may help explain why Mainers are pessimistic about the economy and their own finances even when wages are growing. An August 2025 University of New Hampshire poll found fewer than one in five Mainers thought their household financial situation was better than it had been a year ago, which highlights the weakness of relying purely on the data showing incomes greatly outpaced inflation.
Policymakers can ensure no Mainer is left behind
While this data release shows tools like Maine’s minimum wage law and protections for workers are helping families, legislators should also pay attention to measures that show how Mainers are still struggling. Tens of thousands of Mainers living on low income are still struggling to meet some of their most basic needs, and hundreds of thousands more lack the means to meet a modest lifestyle. Increasing numbers of Mainers are going without health insurance as prices are beyond their reach, and even strong wage and income growth isn’t enough to make housing affordable. Ultimately, only action by lawmakers at the state and federal level can resolve these fundamental issues of affordability. Legislators and members of congress need to strengthen safety nets, invest in housing, health care, and other programs, and pay for it by taxing people with wealth and profitable corporations if they want to truly tackle the economic problems facing Mainers.