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
Degree With the Fastest Expected Rate of Job Growth Between 2016 and 2026
