PORTLAND ? Communities throughout southern Maine would feel economic hardship with the closing of Portsmouth Naval Shipyard and cuts at Brunswick Naval Air Station, but York County would feel the brunt of the pain.

If the Defense Department’s recommendation to close the shipyard stands, the ripples will spread beyond the thousands who lose their jobs. Suppliers, contractors and retailers near the yard in Kittery and in surrounding towns also will share in the economic pain.

“It will be harder on the shipyard employees in York, Kittery, Portsmouth [New Hampshire] for a longer time than it will be for Brunswick,” said Charles Colgan, a professor of public policy and management at the University of Southern Maine’s Muskie School of Public Service.

Part of the reason for that is because of the types of jobs that will be lost. Of the 4,510 jobs cut in Kittery, 4,032 are civilian. In Brunswick, 2,420 jobs would be eliminated, all but 61 of them military positions.

Members of the military assigned to a base are by nature transient, with no deep ties to the community, Colgan said. They also tend to be younger, earning and spending less money.

Most of the civilian shipyard employees, by contrast, have lived in southern Maine and New Hampshire for years, are older and earn an average of $65,000. Military and civilian employees at the air base make less than half that on average.

There aren’t a lot of manufacturing jobs that require the skills possessed by the shipyard workers, and certainly not enough to make up for the loss of more than 4,000 jobs with the high pay and lucrative benefits packages that the shipyard supplied, Colgan said.

The yard’s closing also will hurt small manufacturers, particularly metal fabricators, who supply the parts needed to repair ships. There are about 3,000 of those jobs in the state, although Colgan said it’s impossible to predict how many might be lost by the closing of the Kittery yard.

Hundreds of other businesses also are at stake, from dozens of mom-and-pop stores to car repair shops, furniture stores and grocery stores.

“A lot of income will leave the area,” Colgan said.

The Maine Economic Forecasting Commission, of which Colgan is the chairman, this summer will calculate the loss of income and economic activity. The team produces the estimates that the state relies on for budget preparation.

Colgan said he expects the commission will have to cut its forecast for job growth, which had been estimated at 1 percent a year, and reduce the expected growth in personal income from the current estimate of 4.5 percent to about 4 percent.

“It’s not going to cause the Maine economy to shrink, but it’s going to cut the growth rate,” he said.

The full effect of a shipyard closure and cutbacks at Brunswick will be felt from southern New Hampshire to Maine’s midcoast, said Neal Allen, executive director of the Greater Portland Council of Governments.

Allen said shipyard and air station employees may live mostly in the ends of that corridor, but they also come to the Portland area to shop, go to movies and eat in restaurants.

“We’re all connected economically, so what happens down there will have a huge impact,” Allen said. “It’s a huge blow to the Maine economy and the southern Maine economy in particular.”