Maine’s terrific unemployment figures are built in part on the good news of more jobs and in part on the bad news of long-term population declines. Whichever factor you choose to emphasize, Maine, especially rural Maine, can keep growing only as long as it has people able to expand the work force. North Dakota recently came up with a simple idea to do that, which may be helpful here.

The idea is called Project Back Home. It helps towns reconnect with former residents who have moved out of state to find careers. Its aim is to highlight opportunities for entrepreneurs, developers, investors, employees or retirees back in their hometowns or nearby. The project rests on the idea that former residents would return to their home states if they thought they could thrive there. Nowhere is this premise truer than in Maine.

It is, in fact, a regular refrain from young Mainers who have moved to the Boston or Washington or New York areas. They’ve gotten good educations and have taken on high aspirations, just like we have wanted them to, and they have gone off to seek their fortunes. What they give up is hard to buy, even with their very impressive salaries, except for a week here or there during brief vacations. The question on their minds, and on the minds of people who have merely visited Maine but fell in love with it, is how can they have satisfying careers and still live in this beautiful part of the country.

Project Back Home tries to answer that by getting interested former residents together with town officials to see what can be done. It clearly doesn’t answer all questions; its primary value, in fact, merely may be the message it sends that the state values people raised there. North Dakota’s list of successes is modest so far, but given time to grow the project could serve as an effective information center for economic opportunities.

And because the people it would reach grew up here, no one would have to explain the concept of winter.