Here’s How the MDOL Expects Maine’s Job Market to Change by 2032

The Maine Department of Labor (MDOL) released a report this week exploring the state’s projected job outlook through 2032, outlining trends such as expected job growth, demographic shifts, and industry changes.

Based on the agency’s analysis, job availability is not expected to rise as quickly as the population, but they say this differential will likely be mitigated by “productivity gains.”

The MDOL also projects that several occupations in the health care, professional, and legal fields will grow over the next few years while office administrative positions and repetitive production jobs will decline due to the spread of automation.

Although Maine’s population is expected increase more rapidly than the number of jobs available, the MDOL suggests that “productivity gains are likely to exceed the differential in population and job growth,” reducing the impact of this gap.

Productivity, in this sense, can be understood as the amount of economic output per job. When adjusted for inflation, productivity increased 39 percent between 2000 and 2022, rising an average of 1.8 percent annually.

According to the MDOL’s calculations, the ratio of jobs to the population is expected to be largely unchanged from most of the early 2000s and will be higher than any year prior to 1997.

The agency goes on to argue that increased productivity leads to increased wages, pointing to a sharp rise in the average wage around 2019.

The MDOL goes on to speculate that even if productivity were continue rising at half its current rate, it “would be enough for a workforce little changed in size in the decade through 2032 to meet the increased demand from a population projected to be 2.5 percent larger – and it should be enough to keep real wages rising.”

The report then goes into detail about how the age distribution of Maine’s population is expected to change in the coming years, with the share of people under ten and over 75 increasing from 19 percent to 24 percent of the population.

In 2022, the largest share of Maine’s population was between the ages of 55 and 64. By 2032, this group will be between 65 and 74. While about 68 percent of those in the younger age group typically work, this percentage drops down to just 25 percent for the older grouping as most are retired.

The share of those between the ages of 25 and 54 — who tend to have the highest labor force participation rate at 82 percent — however, is not expected to change significantly over the next few years.

Partly as a response to this aging, the MDOL suggests that the share of personal and healthcare occupations are expected to rise in the coming years.

The agency also projects that jobs in management, business and financial operations, the computer and mathematical sectors, and the legal field will claim a larger share of the market in the coming years.

Advances in “office productivity applications and in production automation,” however, are expected to “gradually reduce” the share of office administrative support jobs, as well as production jobs that “perform routine function.”

Generally speaking, the report notes that sectors with a higher average annual wage typically have a lower projected annual rate of job openings.

The MDOL goes on to attribute this trend to more well-paying jobs having an “older, more established workforce” and tend to require a higher level of education, leading to a lower level of turnover.

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