'Traded jobs' key to growing Maine's economy
I had the opportunity recently to sit down with the organizers of FocusMaine, an effort to attract at least 10,000 jobs to Maine.
The effort is not after just any jobs, but those categorized as “traded jobs,” positions that export products or services from Maine. Traded jobs pay more, require greater education and are more likely to be full-time. Each traded job creates an additional 1.6 jobs among service providers. Employers offering traded jobs include WEX, Idexx, Unum and L.L.Bean, all of which have a significant portion of their customers outside of Maine.
FocusMaine, a nonpartisan, private-sector effort, will focus on three sectors that have shown growth and have what WEX Chairman Michael Dubyak, a FocusMaine co-chair, calls “a long runway” of 30 to 50 years of sustainable growth.
McKinsey & Co. provided consulting to the group and naturally zeroed in on the need to attract qualified workers to Maine. It pointed out, for instance, that there are an estimated 175,000 Mainers living in other New England states.
It's great to focus on bringing back ex-Mainers. But why stop there? Many of the newcomers from Maine were born elsewhere (I'm just one).
This issue's cover story focuses on immigrants, a ready source of potential workers. As Senior Writer Lori Valigra points out her story, some may come with cultural differences or a language barrier, but many also arrive with advanced degrees, ready to apply for traded jobs.
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