A report released today by economists at Georgetown University indicates that Maine will not be able to attract as many high-paying jobs as neighboring states. The report - called "Help Wanted: Projections of Job and Education Requirements Through 2018" - predicts a shortage of college graduates in eight years time, when nearly two-thirds of U.S. jobs will require post-secondary degrees, or similar qualifications.

With not enough Americans completing college courses, the report predicts that nationally, there'll be a shortfall of 3 million by 2018 - in other words 3 million job vacancies that won't be filled because there aren't enough qualified candidates out there.

In Maine though, the concern is the so-called 'brain drain' as college graduates leave the state because not enough higher-paying jobs are on offer.

Economist Nicole Smith, who co-authored the report says by 2018, less than 60 percent of jobs in Maine will require a degree - the lowest number of all the New England states.

Speaking to journalists on a telephone news conference, she says that's because the Maine job market still involves many lower-paying blue collar jobs like fishing, farming and factory work.

"Maine is still highly concentrated in manufacturing and natural resources, and these particular industries do not demand high amounts of post-secondary education and training, or they don't grow as fast as other types of industries such as healthcare, education and business services which require larger proportions of post-secondary," said Smith.

The report's other author Anthony Carnevale says Maine is among the states that are slow in making the transition from the old economy, with about 22% or more of the workforce holding blue collar jobs - the same number as Michigan.

The result, he says, is that Maine has ended up producing college graduates who take their skills somewhere else, like Massachusetts for example, which according to the report is projected to have the highest percentage of higher-paying jobs by 2018.

"That's a tough issue for any governor or any political system, you have to ask a qustion, which is 'is it the responsibility of the state to give individual students a future?' and in places like Maine especially over the years, the answer usually is, if you're going to get a college education, you need to consider leaving, Carnevale said."

"I'm not as quite as pessimistic about the report perhaps," said John Dorrer, director at the Center for Workforce Research & Information
at the Maine Department of Labor.

"I think it really gives us some stronger indications that jobs requiring post-secondary education are growing in larger numbers than those that do not," said Dorrer.

As for the argument that there won't be sufficient numbers of higher jobs in Maine in 2018 to keep college graduates in-state, he says the report fails to consider adequately the state's demographics.

"We are an ageing state, and we're growing very slowly population-wise," Dorrer said. "We're going to have the best educated workforce we've had in place ever gradually retiring. Our challenge is going to be to re-fill and replace those individuals who have held those high-skilled jobs, so I think in the future, there will be more opportunity in Maine for people with college education."

And that of course would merely worsen the problem in other states, which rely on importing graduates from states like Maine to fill gaps in the white collar labor market.

The report's authors meanwhile, say its conclusions underline the need for more people to receive post-secondary education, and the needs for states - especially in New England - to make that education available at a lower cost.

To read the report in full visit http://cew.georgetown.edu/jobs2018/