The industrial sector of the MRC of Coaticook provides numerous jobs and has always represented a vital part of the region’s economy. Since February of 2002, this sector has been providing some 3,888 jobs. One does however have to take into consideration that since January of 2002, the municipality of Waterville has been considered part of the Coaticook MRC. The addition of this municipality added 1,499 new jobs to the existing 2,389 for a total of 3,888 industry jobs. In fact, this total represents over 40% of all jobs in the region. The current total of 66 regional industries specialize in 15 different domains.

The principal industrial activities have remained practically unchanged since 1992.  For ten years, the four domains which represented the most workers (comprising 63.4% of all jobs within the MRC) were rubber, textiles, clothing and wood products. Only recently has furniture taken over textiles as one of the four top industrial activities. These four main domains account for 81.5% of all industrial jobs within the MRC. One should note that even though the wood sector is the largest in terms of number of businesses, it comprises only 426 employees while the rubber sector accounts for 1,614 employees spread through three factories. (It should also be mentioned that the vast majority of businesses (80.2%) employ between 1 and 50 persons).

Excluding Waterville, the total number of employment opportunities has increased by 148.8%, going from 1,605 to 2,389 jobs. The industrial sector that has seen the biggest growth in terms of number of jobs is furniture manufacturing, which has observed an increase of 732%. Following the furniture sector, is machinery and machining which accounts for a job increase of 262.5%. The addition of the municipality of Waterville to the MRC of Coaticook explains the significant increase of manpower in the two main sectors of rubber, where 74.3% of the workforce works in Waterville and metal products where 72% of the workforce works in Waterville.