"With Maine as an aging state with a very slow-growing population, one of the least diverse states in the nation, we're going to challenged," says John Dorrer, an economist at the Maine Department of Labor, and a guest speaker at the conference. "What we have happening in our workforce is an aging of the baby-boomers and increasingly baby boomers exiting from the workforce. Those are workers that are going to have to be replaced, and the question remains, 'Who is going to replace those workers?'"

Dorrer expects a labor shortage to be especially bad in the green energy sector and the fledging composites industry, where he foresees a growth in the need for technical jobs once the economy has rebounded. "And even if growth ends up being very modest, our challenge is going to be to meet the replacement needs, because we're going to see retirements of professional, technical and a lot of the higher skilled workers."

Even now, says Dorrer, with an 8.5 percent jobless rate in Maine, there's a labor shortage, and not just in the area of highly skilled technical jobs.

John Dorrer: "And then in other occupations like in construction and the like, where people do have limits in terms of how long they can work. Those demands are going to come much earlier in terms of making sure we're able to replace the construction worker, the crane operator, the welder, the fabricator, so it's across the economy that we're going to have to attend to replacing, and making sure that we have the proper workforce."

Tom Porter: "It might seem on the surface like this shouldn't really be a problem because there's so many spare people who are going to be available."

JD: "It's not always just about aggregate numbers because -- and you're right, we have about 60,000 individuals that we estimate are unemployed right now -- but we also have spot-skill mismatches. We have conversations with employers in the state who are attempting to recruit welders and fabricators and are having a difficult time doing so."

"We have lots of positions open, for example right now on the coast, we need 20 welders, right away, and we're having a hard time finding them," says April Clark, a regional director with the global recruitment firm Manpower. "There's this perception out there that because the unemployment rate is high, that there's this plentiful source of workers available at all times, and at all skill levels, but the reality is that's not actually what we're seeing. What we're seeing is that it's still hard to find the right person for the job."

One of the problems facing employers, she says, is the sheer volume of applications they receive for all job openings. Linda Smith is a recruiter for Mercy Hospital in Portland, which is having difficulty filling the many openings it currently has in its healthcare, administration, and service operations.

Linda Smith: "We have a lot openings and we're getting a lot of applicants, but it's hard to weed through all of them and see who's the right fit."

Tom Porter: "So part of the problem of having so many people on the job market is that you get floods and floods of applications and it slows things up."

LS: "Exactly. We're getting hundreds, if not thousands, of applications and trying to weed through all those and look for the person who's the best fit."

Small business owners in particular are likely to be badly hit by a labor shortfall once the economy recovers, says conference organizer Merrit Carey, who points out that they are too busy to even attend the conference.

"Maine's economy rides on the back of the small-to-mid-sized businesses, and it's hard to reach out to those small-to-midsized businesses and inform them about the shifts in the workforce that are coming down the track because the owners of those businesses are really busy running their businesses on a daily basis and doing their jobs, so they're not really thinking strategically about workforce problems," Carey says.

One way to head off those potential shortfalls, says Carey, is to tap into the state's underemployed populations, such as immigrants and people with disabilities.

This works for Patti Crooks, who manages the Aroostook Center Mall in Presque Isle, which employs about 25 people. "About 55-60 percent of my staff is folks with disabilities," she says, "And they are great workers."

Crooks says the practice of hiring a lot of disabled people actually began about 15 years ago - an initiative that she says was not done entirely for altruistic reasons. "Aroostock County, we've had outward migration for every bit of 10, 20 years, so we've had it. So you learn to adapt to that, and through the adaption you learn to look at other avenues, other prospects for employees, and you begin to become open-minded by necessity."

According to the State Planning Office, Maine's overall population is expected to rise nearly eight percent between 2002 and 2012. During the same period the population under age 20 is expected to decline by nine percent. For more information about the issues mentioned in this report, visit www.expandingmainesworkforce.com