Building IT

The bad news about Maine’s information-technology industry is not just that it has far fewer jobs per-capita in this field than most of the rest of the country. It is that state projections at least through 2006 show it falling even further behind, with Maine paying lower wages than average and failing to attract the most desirable higher-skill IT workers. A new report commissioned by UMaine President Peter Hoff details Maine’s predicament. Its purpose was to examine the IT job market and determine how well the university was responding to it, but the document should be of interest beyond the university.

David F. Wihry, chairman of the Department of Economics at UMaine, and John Dorrer of the National Center for Education and the Economy looked at supply and demand in the IT and computer fields. There is good news here as well as bad. Best might be their observation that the Maine job-growth projections may be too conservative, and good too is the prediction that IT jobs in the state will make up the top five occupations with the highest growth rates for people with college degrees.

For the university, the news is reassuring. It has had a student-retention problem in computer science and computer engineering, which the report says is being addressed and it is creating programs such as the New Media bachelor’s degree and the master’s-level Information Science degree to offer a wider range of options to students. The report notes that graduate IT courses currently have room for more students and that the university should do more marketing to attract students. Overall, it appears that UMaine offers a fair and growing selection of computer courses that most students could apply to future employment in may different areas.

Don’t be surprised, however, if many of those well-trained students seek employment elsewhere. Or as the report’s authors put it: “Persistence of earnings differentials in Maine will make it more difficult for firms to find qualified information technology professionals.” With the exception of systems analysts, who receive nearly the national median, wages for IT jobs in Maine are only about 80 percent of the average median wage. Because new graduates in these fields are in high demand, they are likely to get several job offers and many will go where the money is best. This has been a problem for Maine for many occupations and no amount of talk about a lower cost of living or higher quality of life seems to stop recent college graduates from leaving the state.

What Maine needs, commented Mr. Dorrer, is “a more sophisticated workforce that knows its way around IT.” To get that, it needs a better-defined strategy for attracting not just the entry-level computer support specialist, of whom it has abundance, but the engineer and software creator who could in turn attract others to the state. There are roles not just for the university, but for the technical colleges, private research centers and the several technology-related business groups that all are trying to build this new industry here.

Many other states already have a jump on Maine in pushing strategies, but now is as good a time as any to start catching up. The UMaine report serves as a handy foundation for further work in forming such a plan.