New technology is taking a toll on middle managers and lower-skilled white-collar workers.

Take the Maine state government, once considered a bastion of job security.

Hundreds of clerks and dozens of middle managers have been laid off by the state last year and this year. Technology helped the state eliminate many of the jobs.

Shirley Bartlett, 44, held one of them. She worked for the state for 18 years. Most recently she was human resources manager at the state Department of Economic and Community Development and earned about $31,000 annually.

New computers, communications and electronic record-keeping systems helped the state consolidate many of its human resources functions under one roof.

''The ability to do that comes because of all the technology that's present today. It's led to a lot of good things, but the downside is I'm out of a job and on the street and I'm a single parent,'' Bartlett said.

Although the state has laid off workers at all levels, lower-skilled occupations including highway laborers, prison guards and clerks have taken the biggest hit.

Economists say that lower-skilled workers are more likely to lose their jobs because of technology than highly skilled people.

Nationally, workers with a high school diploma are almost twice as likely to be laid off as people with a college degree, according to recent research at Princeton University.

Lower-skilled positions in Maine state government accounted for roughly 56 percent of the 1,300 jobs lost, according to state figures. Managers and supervisors made up 21 percent of the layoffs. Professional and technical workers made up the remainder.

Small changes eliminated the need for many lower-skilled jobs.

For example, connecting the state's personal computers into a network allows most government employees to write memos and send them electronically with the push of a button. That capability reduced the need for secretaries to type up and photocopy notes. More than 200 typist and stenographer positions have been cut by the state.

Finance Commissioner Janet Waldron, who headed the state's effort to downsize, said jobs that required minimal skills were the ones most likely to be cut because technology could help fill the void.

''Regretfully, I think that's the case.''

On the flip side, technological advances are creating some good, new jobs throughout the economy for highly skilled workers.

Occupations in Maine that generally require a college education pay twice as much on average as jobs that don't - an estimated $18 an hour vs. $9.

But the new, high-tech jobs being created often aren't available to displaced lower-skilled workers, unless they go back to school and get retrained.

Technology creeps into remotest corners of Maine

Just ask Gary Caron. The 48-year-old logger from Lee has been cutting trees for 25 years using a chain saw. For the past 10 years he cut wood for a local paper company.

This year he lost the job because the company decided to use high-tech mechanical harvesters, he said.

''We're just losing our jobs,'' Caron said. ''Machinery is taking over. What you could do with 15 men, you now only need five.''

Several logging companies in Maine now use the mechanical harvesters, including Jack Frost's company in Anson.

Frost said he used to employ eight people before he bought his computer-operated harvester for $400,000 several months ago. Now he employs three, including himself. The machine has an enclosed, climate-controlled cab with a stereo and a computer keyboard.

''It appears that just in the manpower and benefits and fuel consumption there is no comparison'' to the type of operation he had before, Frost said.

The new technology is part of a long-term trend that saw the number of loggers in Maine drop by 47 percent from 1984 to 1993.

''You're replacing labor with capital,'' said Bud Blumenstock, a forestry professor at the University of Maine. ''Paul Bunyan and the blue ox is being replaced by technology.''

-- Andrew Garber