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Poll results

Sponsored by: OTELCO Inc.

Since March, Maine has experienced major upheavals in business as a result of COVID-19. Many of the changes, particularly in the hospitality and tourism sectors, have been crippling.

Yet other industries have seen surges in sales and in employment, as companies pivot to meet new pandemic-driven demands.

One example has been the growth of Abbott Diagnostics in southern Maine. In northern Maine, a second Puritan Medical Products plant is now in the works to manufacture COVID test swabs. With the new factories, Puritan expects to bring a total of 600 new jobs to Pittsfield.

Ultimately, could the changes in Maine business due to the pandemic be a net benefit for the state's economy?
Yes (40%, 123 VOTES)
No (60%, 182 VOTES)
Poll Description

Sponsored by: OTELCO Inc.

Since March, Maine has experienced major upheavals in business as a result of COVID-19. Many of the changes, particularly in the hospitality and tourism sectors, have been crippling.

Yet other industries have seen surges in sales and in employment, as companies pivot to meet new pandemic-driven demands.

One example has been the growth of Abbott Diagnostics in southern Maine. In northern Maine, a second Puritan Medical Products plant is now in the works to manufacture COVID test swabs. With the new factories, Puritan expects to bring a total of 600 new jobs to Pittsfield.

  • 305 Votes
  • 19 Comments
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19 Comments

  • October 13, 2020

    The ability for companies nationwide to do more remotely opens myriad possibilities for Mainers in outlying counties to find jobs in well paid fields. Maine needs to make sure that the infrastructure (high speed internet, etc.) is in place and maintained so all Mainers can take advantage of the new, remote work opportunities opening up.

  • October 13, 2020

    My guess is the gains will not be enough to offset the losses to our hospitality and tourism sectors. This winter could be particularly challenging for restaurants and bars. However, the in-migration of out-of-staters buying first and second homes should be a long term positive.

  • October 13, 2020

    People are going to move to Maine because of quality of life.

  • October 13, 2020

    The damage that has been done to the tourism business will not be fully known until the end of next summer. It is not just hotels and restaurants, since it is all of the ancillary businesses. The lockdown and government mandates have been brutal on tourism. A couple hundred jobs in industries that will scale down will not even come close to outweighing what happened to the tourism businesses. Watch for the trend of big companies coming in and buying up longtime Maine companies in tourism, since they are either going out of business or hurting for cashflow.

  • October 13, 2020

    Optimizing state regulations strictly around COVID does not consider the side effects of shutting down the economy. We should take a broader view and look not only at the economic effects of a partial shutdown, but look at the health effects as well. Statistically, more people are dying from the shutdown than from the virus. In Maine for example, we have approximately 100 incremental deaths just from drug overdoses (above the norm) this year. There are significant other health side effects of the shutdown - reduction in cancer screenings, increases in alcoholism and addiction, people delaying seeing a physician resulting in strokes and heart attacks, etc. In total, we have more deaths from the shutdown than from COVID. On the world front, the UN estimates an INCREMENTAL 350,000 starvation deaths per DAY against 1 million COVID deaths world wide over a 7 month period.