PRESQUE ISLE, Maine — Like most of Maine, Aroostook County is searching for ways to attract and retain young workers to fill gaps as older employees retire out of the workforce.
Working toward that goal, local and statewide stakeholders attended a forum called Magnetize Maine at the University of Maine Presque Isle on Friday to share ideas on how to go about what some described as the key to the state’s future. Some of the Aroostook County stakeholders included S.W. Collins, Smith Farms, and MMG Insurance.
Panelists said employers in Aroostook County are looking for young professionals in fields like financial services, agriculture, manufacturing, and entrepreneurs looking to start their own businesses. Some panels focused on family farms and young professionals.
“The goal is to focus on attraction and retention in Maine, so we took it a step further to go and focus on Aroostook County,” said Mark Levasseur, chair of the board of Momentum Aroostook, a local group focused on bringing professional and social events to the region. This is the first year the decade-old Magnetize Maine summit has been hosted in Aroostook County.
Some of the panelists suggested employers help new workers find affordable housing, a problem in many areas of Maine; diversify business and farm models to attract more job candidates, and improve digital infrastructure to aid remote working.
One of the speakers was Denise St. Peter, economic analyst for the Office of the State Economist, who spoke about the large population declines in Aroostook County as a share of Maine’s population, despite a 2.6 percent increase in Maine’s population from 2010 to 2020. The County lost 7.1 percent of its population in that span.
In Aroostook County, the largest age population is 60 to 64 with a lower labor force participation, while labor force participation for those ages 25 to 29 is higher but they are fewer in number, St. Peter said
St. Peter went on to say Maine is having a natural population decline with more deaths than births, but has positive net migration from the international community moving to Maine.
Aroostook County has a higher employment rate of teenage workers than the rest of Maine, she said.
On the farm panel, one of the subjects discussed was succession of family farms like Smith Farms and Penobscot McCrum, and how these farms are innovating in their marketing and crop diversification outside the borders of Aroostook County and Maine.
“I think that because we are in such a rural area that our businesses especially have had to get innovative and creative with the ways that they attract people to Maine,” Michaud said.
When young professionals move to Maine they first go to Portland, but Momentum Aroostook highlights the opportunities Maine has for young professionals in the northern region of Maine, Michaud said.
