Annual precipitation in Maine averages 43 inches. Many of Maine's residents populate the southern half of the state. In addition, Maine is the most sparsely populated state east of the Mississippi. In Maine, the health services, social services, and business services sectors have added the most jobs in the past five years. Maine is famous for lobster but more paychecks come from manufacturing forest products, food processing and agriculture than fishing.
Maine is the only one of the forty-eight contiguous states to border only one other state.
It is bounded by the State of New Hampshire, the Canadian Provinces of Quebec and New Brunswick, and the Atlantic Ocean. Maine's fourth and eighth graders scored among the highest in the nation in math, reading, and science, and ranked thirteenth in the nation for high school graduation rates. Eighty percent of the adult population has a high school education plus at least some post-secondary education. The University of Maine system is made up of seven institutions that strengthen the state economically, socially and culturally. In 1996, there were 33.9 incidents of crime per 1,000 people, whereas in the US as a whole, the crime rate was 50 incidences per 1,000 people.