Nearly five years after the Great Recession of 2008, the road to economic recovery has been sluggish nationwide – with employment and economic activity still below levels recorded before the severe recession hit. Of particular concern is that the growth in Maine, along with that of the rest of New England, continues to lag behind even the sluggish growth of the overall U.S. recovery. As the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston concluded at the end of 2013, “While New England’s economy continued to make moderate advances in 2013, the region experienced smaller gains in economic activity than the nation.”