State says workers needed Baby boomer retirees creating high demand

Maine businesses may have trouble filling positions in the future, according to a study from the state’s labor department.

The study, conducted by the Center for Workforce Research and Information at the Maine Department of Labor, projected that there will be a high demand for skilled and unskilled workers in a variety of occupations throughout a broad spectrum of Maine’s economy in the coming years.

There is some question whether there will be enough workers to meet those needs.

The study projected high-demand and high-wage jobs through 2014. In the study, high demand indicates that an occupation is expected to have at least 20 openings per year through 2014. High wage indicates a median wage in an occupation at or above $13.76 per hour, the median wage for all Maine occupations in 2006.

“Much of this is being driven by the baby boomers, the first of whom recently became eligible for Social Security,” according to John Dorrer, the center’s director. “We anticipate a wave of retirements will start to occur at a greater rate now. And these people will be retiring from some of the most skilled jobs across the spectrum – business, service and manufacturing.”

The loss of those skilled workers is compounded by a decade of workforce reduction in many companies throughout the state, according to Dorrer.

“Over the past 10 years or so, organizations have flattened out their workforces, and there is now very little redundancy among their workers,” he said.

The days when younger employees worked alongside more experienced employees, doing one job and learning from the older worker, have in many areas disappeared, and businesses no longer have on-the-job trained workers to move into those jobs vacated by retirees, he said.

The Cianbro Corp. found a shortage of workers with training to do innovative and high-tech work needed at its Eastern Manufacturing facility in South Brewer. The company already has hired more than 200 employees for the project, which will build modules for a new oil refinery to be assembled in Texas. But Cianbro has had to train many of those workers in the new technologies it will be using on the project.

“We have to do it,” Cianbro Chairman Peter G. Vigue said recently. “This is not the same kind of welding. It’s unique technology. Education and training is the key.”

Because the work is new and exciting, the project is attracting young people who might otherwise have left the state in search of work.

While Cianbro’s need is for skilled workers, the center’s study indicates the demand for workers will not be limited to trained employees.

The demand will be highest for a mixed bag of occupations. Advertising sales, bus drivers, cooks, carpenters, electricians, firefighters, supervisors, retail sales managers, maintenance and repair workers, police officers, sales representatives, truck drivers, automobile mechanics, nurses, accountants, teachers, legal secretaries, laboratory technicians, computer software engineers, agricultural managers, waste-treatment plant operators, and a slew of other occupations were included in the list of high-demand jobs.

“The demand is not only in business and health services where we’ve focused our efforts, but in the technical and craft occupations that we haven’t paid a lot of attention to – welders, plumbers, carpenters, the people who build Maine,” he said. “And we’re seeing that those occupations often are in the high-wage levels.”

“The challenge is finding someone to do Maine’s work,” he said. “We have the jobs; we can’t find the people.”

Cianbro has created the workers it needs by training them in-house. Some businesses may need to consider that as an option to provide the workforce they need. Other industries, such as boat building, are working on programs to train workers in the latest technologies, and the state also has boosted educational efforts through the community college system, Dorrer said. In addition, he said, two new state programs could help to strengthen the state’s workforce in coming years.

The Competitive Skills Scholarship Program is a $3 million a year scholarship program that will provide funds for low-skills workers who are looking to upgrade their skills.

Opportunity Maine, a loan forgiveness program, is designed to encourage students to remain in the state after they graduate.

The question facing Maine in the coming years is whether those programs will be enough to provide the workers the state needs.

rhewitt@bangordailynews.net

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