They call themselves Maine exiles. They are young, mostly in their early to mid-20s, have left Maine and, for various reasons, can't come back home even though they want to return.
They say Maine lacks good postgraduate education programs, the jobs they want, and the kind of diverse, exciting social scene they crave.
Maine's population of young adults, mainly between the ages of 20-34, is steadily decreasing. Since 1990, this group has decreased by nearly 22 percent, according to recently released census numbers. And the exodus of these 20- and early 30-somethings has serious economic implications for Maine, especially as Maine's large population of baby boomers begins to reach retirement age.
Brian Callahan, a public relations executive in Boston, is among the exiles. He left Maine in 1993 when he decided to attend college in New York.
"I definitely thought about moving back up at some point, but I weighed out the options and asked myself, 'What would I do if I went up there?' " he said.
To Callahan, there seemed to be a limited number of jobs for people in his line of work, especially when compared to metropolitan Boston. More choice of jobs A bigger city means more jobs to choose from overall, another important factor for young people. The problem, said state economist Laurie Lachance, is not that there are no jobs in Maine, but there is a lack of diversity and density in the job market.
In Boston, she said, or another metropolitan area, "if you are in a particular company and developing a set of skills, and for some reason you lose your job, all you have to do is look around and you have six to 10 places to look to. Whereas, in Maine, if you're working in Portland, you can't just turn around and use those skills in the company down the street because it just isn't there."
Charles Colgan, a professor of public policy at the Edmund S. Muskie School of Public Policy at the University of Southern Maine, agreed. He said that for highly skilled jobs, Maine "is not a dense market."
"The old model of rolling out of college to a corporate job for the rest of your life is very much passe," he said. "I think that is a change in the way young people look at the job market. I think young people are correctly perceiving the way the job market works today."
The limited number of jobs also makes it difficult to move up in companies that are in Maine because many of the upper level positions are filled by older people who have been settled in the state for years.
Kate Marquis, a video editor in Windham, N.H., who was raised in North Yarmouth, said she plans to move back to Maine after she's gained more experience in her field.
"In Maine, there's only a certain number of production companies, and the people in those jobs are very stationary," she said. "For me it was, go to Maine and get into an entry level, but then there are only so many places I can go. Out of Maine, it's a little bit easier to move up the ladder quicker."
Jobs such as video production and other high-tech fields seem to be scarce in Maine, according to many of the people who have left. Greg Berry, a computer systems manager in Boston, said he would love to move back to Maine after being away since 1998. He is engaged to be married and said he thought Maine would be a good place to settle down to raise his family, but is concerned that there are no jobs for his fiancee, who is a research analyst for an Internet firm.
These exiles also say they can make almost twice as much money in other cities and that plays a part in their departures.
"Our relative personal income is not high enough to attract people," Colgan said. 'Big name' schools Young people also recognize the growing importance of graduating from a "big name" school, both in their undergraduate careers and especially if they pursue a graduate degree program.
Joe Romano, also a public relations executive in Boston, said he tried hard to stay in Maine. He attended college at Bates, but decided to leave to go to graduate school at Boston University in investor relations and corporate public relations. Such a program didn't even exist in Maine, he said, let alone one that carried sufficient name recognition.
"If you wanted to go into a top-flight, number-one rated program in America, none of them were in Maine," he said.
Even Maine's top-rated schools, such as the University of Maine, USM, Bates, Colby and Bowdoin, don't seem to have the same "star quality" as other, out-of-state schools, Romano said. So, the decision to leave can be an easy one, especially since there more than 200 schools a mere two hours away in Boston. Seeing the world But beyond plain economics, Maine exiles admit that they also want to see more of the world than what their hometowns have to offer. Other than Portland, many exiles say, there isn't a very exciting social scene for 20-somethings. And again, with Boston just a short drive away, and New York City not that much farther, the excitement and diversity of the big city can be a lure.
For Michael Ingalls, a native of Lyman who left Maine after he graduated from high school, the opportunities and excitement of New York City had been an irresistible draw to him since he was 16.
"I felt that Maine just didn't have as much culture; there wasn't a lot of diversity," Ingalls said.
"Maine was an absolutely great place to grow up," Ingalls said. "But for me to be in my 20s and having the opportunity to go to school, I just wanted to take advantage" of living in the city.
For many of these people between the ages of 20 and 34, to be young and relatively unattached is enough of a reason to leave the state.
Several said they would like to return to the state to raise their own families. Until then, they want to live in different places and have a wider range of experiences before they settle down.
But what if these young exiles do not return to Maine? It's a serious concern to people like Lachance and Colgan, who are worried about an aging population that has no young people waiting to fill in the labor market after they retire.
"It's troubling because we already have tight labor markets, because our population growth overall is very slow and it's already starting to put constraints on our ability to grow," Lachance said. Mission for Maine Colgan and Lachance agree that Maine must work on improving its post-secondary education resources, invest in research and development and other industries that are "knowledge-based" rather than manufacturing, and work to attract companies in these industries.
But Maine must also work to re-engage its older populations into the work force as well, Lachance said.
And the loss of young people may not be irreversible. As baby boomers begin to retire, for example, the number of vacant jobs they leave behind may entice young people to return to Maine.
The numbers, Colgan said, "can, in fact, rebalance." The decline in young people during the 1990s might be related more to Maine's inability to attract young people than to the flight of young adults.
"I think the really critical question is: Did more young people actually leave Maine in the 1990s than the last decade or did we simply fail to attract people to come to Maine in the 1990s?" Colgan said. Maine was slow to recover from the recession of the early '90s, a time when many of the exiles said they left the state.
"Maine did not show any significant economic growth until the latter part of the decade, behind the rest of the country," he said. "There wasn't much growth to attract people to come in. It's not that we're necessarily bad, it's that other places are better or improving faster," Colgan said.
Maine exiles are patient, however, and hope that their state will rebound so they can return to raise their own families.
"There's something about Maine that gets in your blood and you can't let it go," Marquis said.
Jen Fish can be contacted at 791-6329 or: jfish@pressherald.com
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