About a third of all jobs in Maine fail to pay enough to live on, even by the modest measures of 185 percent of the federal poverty level or $10.29 an hour for a family of two. The Maine Center for Economic Policy today will describe what it means to get by on these wages in a report that includes useful ways to improve the situation. Economic developers should also look at what the report means for the state’s reputation across the country.

The level of wages needed to make ends meet varies by region in Maine with, for instance, housing costs pushing up expenses in the southern part of the state. But on average a single parent with one child needs to earn nearly $14 an hour, according to the center, an amount beyond the pay for about half of all jobs surveyed. For two parents, both working, and two children, the livable wage needed is $10.81 for each parent. The wages required vary over the range of the number of children, whether two parents live at home and whether one or both work because of child care costs, tax treatment and the cliff effects, described by the center’s reports.

The cliffs are government benefits that a family receives that end suddenly when, for example, wages go up slightly and the family no longer qualifies for what was a substantial benefit. Some of the subsidy cliffs from which people fall are for health care, tax credits and renter rebates. The list of jobs that pay less than a livable wage is what would be expected. It includes an increasing number of low-end service jobs, but it also lists some of the occupations people say they value: preschoolteachers, nursing aides, ambulance attendants and corrections officers. They are part of a trend in Maine that will force even more young Mainers to look for work elsewhere.

More than 42,000 jobs were cut from 1989 to 2001 among industries that lost jobs. These jobs were worth an average salary of $36,374. They were replaced by many more jobs – nearly 110,000 of them, but these paid an average of only $27,007 a year. The center’s report quotes the Maine Economic Growth Council on why this is harmful for everyone: “Jobs that pay below a livable wage are not likely to contribute to a vibrant and sustainable economy and they ultimately result in higher taxes for Maine businesses and citizens.”

And that’s why economic developers should be worried by what they see in the center’s report. Maine already is famous for its tax burden – the amount of state and local taxes paid compared with income – but the state tax rank actually is slightly better than its income rank. Both need work and lawmakers were right this year to avoid adding taxes, but low-wage jobs make the challenge of reducing the tax burden much more difficult.

The center has six very good suggestions for addressing the problems that low-wage earners face. It suggests raising the minimum wage, expanding the earned-income tax credit and expanding the property tax circuit-breaker program, among others. It would receive much more support for these ideas, however, if more Mainers understood that their children weren’t leaving merely because of the winters, and that part of the economic burden that everyone feels is caused by wages that fail to allow a family to pay its bills.