AUGUSTA – Mainers have been making more money, but there are thousands of fewer jobs to go around, a report released in time for Labor Day says.

Per capita income among Mainers rose by 3.3 percent to $27,744 between 2001 and 2002 for the 13th-fastest growth rate in the nation, the Center on Economic Policy said in its report released Thursday.

Over the same period, median wages grew to $12.57 an hour, but the rate was slower than in previous years, said the “State of Working Maine” report by the nonpartisan group, which advocates for low-income people. A median wage is the point where half the state’s workers earn more and half earn less.

Maine’s latest unemployment rate, 4.9 percent in July, is below the national rate of 6.2 percent.

Center Executive Director Christopher St. John says the figures don’t tell the whole story.

The report says there were 7,300 fewer jobs in the state this June than in July 2002, with most of the lost jobs in the manufacturing sector.

“Like the rest of the nation, we are caught in a ‘jobless recovery’ where incomes have risen slowly while employment has declined since our most recent recession technically ended in November 2001,” St. John said.

St. John said Maine’s “underemployment rate,” which factors in people who have given up looking for work or would like to work and can’t, is 8.6 percent, still lower than the national underemployment rate of 9.6 percent.

St. John sees promise in a newly enacted state law designed to provide affordable health insurance to all Mainers.

The Dirigo Health measure signed into law in June by Gov. John Baldacci was designed to expand access to coverage, control health-care costs and maintain the quality of care.

Coverage is to be offered through private health carriers for a standard package of benefits.