The Portland Regional Chamber released its annual economic scorecard last week. As is usual with such ratings, this one was followed by a flurry of Olympian conclusion-jumping and earnest Monday morning quarterbacking. “Alarming.” “Falling behind. “It could have been worse.”– were among the milder reactions.

People I have spoken with were particularly concerned with two items on the scorecard: the negative overall employment growth and the below-average “average annual income.” On the surface, these data points seem to reinforce the conventional wisdom that Maine – and now even Portland – was losing “good” (meaning high-paying) jobs that were being replaced with low paying jobs. Such gross conclusions, I think, miss a great deal of what is going on in a very dynamic labor market.

Total employment in Portland did decrease in 2013 by 0.2 percent (a drop of 163 jobs). But the total wages paid to those holding the 67,259 jobs that remained and were created in 2013 grew by 2.2 percent – an increase of over $72 million. That’s a lot of new money flowing into the city. And it’s not the result of low-paying jobs replacing high-paying jobs. In fact, there were five sectors that experienced this superficially paradoxical phenomenon of declining employment and growing wages: wholesale trade, retail trade, administrative services, educational services and the arts, entertainment and recreation sector. As a whole, they employed 477 fewer people in 2013, but paid $9.8 million more in wages.

This is exactly the sort of progress Portland ought to be cheering and must continue to make – growing productive businesses that pay higher wages. Only by encouraging, nurturing and attracting more such businesses can Portland (and thereby Maine) hope to reach its fundamental goal of creating not just more jobs but more productive jobs, jobs that command high wages. Only those sorts of jobs will create the pull in the job market for young people seeking to begin their working careers that the region’s vaunted quality of life exerts on the older generation seeking to build the post-employment phase of their lives. Without more such “good” jobs, the overriding demographic trends sweeping the country will continue to turn Maine into a seasonal retreat for affluent boomers and a residue of those without the skills to leave.

And here also, there is good news to be found in the details beneath the disappointing totals. In professional and technical services – everything from architects and engineers to attorneys, IT, marketing and management experts – Portland saw an increase of 257 jobs accompanied by an increase of nearly $24 million in wages. The average wage in this sector jumped to nearly $74,000 per year. Similarly, in health and social services, the city saw an increase of 287 jobs, more than $16 million in wages and an average annual wage that jumped to nearly $52,000.

And yes, employment in the food and lodging sector did grow by 248 jobs. And yes, its average annual wage was less than $20,000. But this growth still added nearly $8 million in wages to the city’s economy and hardly overshadowed the more significant growth in the high-wage sectors. And it remains true that these additional jobs did not offset the more than 350 jobs lost in manufacturing, construction and public administration and the nearly 500 jobs lost in the sectors replacing lower wage jobs with higher wage jobs.

But that’s the fundamental point to be understood about economic development and, therefore, the fundamental point to be made about the annual “scores” that show up regularly is reports such as these: Progress is not uniform. In spite of our seemingly inescapable desire to smooth change evenly over all sectors, all regions and all social groupings, that’s just not how it happens. It is fitful, uneven, unpredictable and, often, apparently self-contradictory. But we are better to have such complicated change than no change at all. No change would be what I would call “truly alarming.”

Charles Lawton is chief economist for Planning Decisions Inc. He can be contacted at:

clawton@planningdecisions.com