Occupational Employment Outlook to 2026

Our recent Employment Outlook blog focused on how an aging population is constraining job growth in Maine. We expect the relative flatness of the last decade to continue through our forecast horizon of 2026. Though little change in total employment is expected, large numbers of job openings are expected each year, and the structure of employment will continue to gradually shift toward certain occupations and away from others.

Changes in demand for goods and services and the competitive landscape, as well as other factors cause employment to rise in some companies and industries and decline in others. This directly impacts which occupations are in demand. Changes in bank employment, for example, impacts demand for tellers and loan officers, as changes in construction employment impacts demand for carpenters and electricians. The occupational distribution of jobs within companies and industries also changes over time as technology and innovations in work processes reshape how functions are accomplished.

Shifting Occupational Job Structure

Occupations are categorized into 22 broad groupings of generally like functions. Of those, the number of jobs is expected to rise in 14 and decline in eight groups, though only ten groups are expected to have a net change of more than 500 jobs in the ten years through 2026. The largest job gains are expected in health practitioner and technician; healthcare support; personal care and service; food preparation and serving; and property cleaning and maintenance occupations. The largest job declines are expected in office and administrative support; sales and related; and production occupations. Growth in health and personal care occupations is largely due to the rapidly rising senior population, as described in the previous blog; declines in administrative support, sales, and production occupations are largely due to continued advances in technology and automation of repetitive tasks and the impact of rising online sales on retail stores.


Despite differences in growth and decline, the occupational structure of employment is expected to change only marginally. The groups with the most or fewest jobs in 2016 are expected to remain the same in 2026. The expected gain of 3,800 jobs in healthcare practitioner and technician occupations will move it from the fifth to the fourth largest group with 46,800 jobs in 2026; the office and administrative support group will remain the largest with 90,000 jobs, despite the expected decline of 4,900 jobs.


Some recent media coverage of our forecast said that we expect people to lose jobs in occupations projected to decline. The truth is that the labor market is much more dynamic than that static interpretation portrays. There is a constant flow of people into and out of the labor force over time: young people reach working-age, older people retire, some take time out of labor force to gain an education or work credential or to raise children, and then return to work. Additionally, individuals advance their job knowledge, skills, and qualifications that allow them to move up the career ladder. Some people relocate to another community for a better job or for other reasons.

Job Openings

Information to guide career choices has tended to focus on trends: growing occupations are viewed as offering opportunity, and declining occupations more negatively. But that focus is too narrow. While the data suggests there will be little net job growth in the ten years through 2026, we expect about 728,000 job openings in the period – more openings than there are jobs today. In virtually every occupation, growing or declining, there will be people who lose jobs for performance, business contraction or closure, or other reasons, or who retire, and there will be people who gain jobs for business expansion or creation, or worker replacement needs, or who enter the labor force.

The office and administrative support occupational group provides a good example of this dynamism. Though we expect employment in the group to decline by 4,900 jobs, an average of 9,800 job openings are expected in each of the ten years through 2026. Some openings are expected in nearly all of the more than 600 individual occupations we have published projections for, including those projected to decline sharply.


The number of openings in a group is generally related to the number of jobs, with some exceptions. Rates of growth or decline vary, of course, and so do rates of occupational turnover due to exits or transfers. We can generalize that occupations that require advanced or specialized training and that pay well, such as healthcare practitioners, tend to have an older, more settled workforce with generally lower rates of turnover and job openings. Occupations with limited education or skill requirements that offer relatively low pay, such as food preparation jobs, tend to have a younger, less well-established workforce, and much higher rates of worker turnover and job openings.


The labor market changes gradually each year. Over short periods those changes are small; over extended periods they are significant. By the time a person retires the occupational composition of the labor market will be quite different than when they started work as a young person. Additionally, the knowledge and skill requirements of occupations change over time. The penetration of automation, mechanization, and information technology into how we perform tasks has made some occupations obsolete, created entire new fields of work, and generally changed how a wide range of tasks in most occupations are performed. This will continue in the years ahead. In an ever-evolving environment, it is important for individuals to keep their job skills up-to-date with the changing needs of employers.


This has been a very general description of our occupational employment projections to 2026. Detail on over 600 individual occupations, including expected growth or decline, openings, and wages is available at www.maine.gov/labor/cwri/outlook.html. Users can generate charts or tables for occupations by number of expected job openings, rate of change, or net change by education requirement, and can look at the outlook for individual occupations or groups. The following charts are examples of some of available information.

Occupations That Require a High School Diploma or Less With the
Most Expected Annual Job Openings Between 2016 and 2026

Occupations That Require a Bachelor’s Degree or Higher With the
Largest Expected Net Job Growth Between 2016 and 2026


 Occupations That Require Some College, a Non-Degree Award, or Associate’s 
Degree With the Fastest Expected Rate of Job Growth Between 2016 and 2026

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