Maine has made big strides toward economic growth this year, but needs to do more regarding making housing affordable, improving mental health and boosting education to build the state’s workforce.

Those were some key findings in the 2023 Measures of Growth report, an annual assessment of the state’s economic progress. The Maine Development Foundation, a part-public nonprofit research group that studies economic growth in the state, released the report on Wednesday.

The report showed Maine’s workforce, which declined by 27,000 in 2020, stood in 2022 at 675,000, which the report described as “pre-pandemic levels.”

Yellow Light Breen, the foundation’s president and CEO, said this is partly due to Maine’s aging and retiring workforce, which he described as “Maine’s unforgiving demographics.”  

He noted, however, that there are signs of out-of-state workers migrating to Maine. 

“Promisingly, we’re getting increased integration into our state to help us make up the difference, but it’s going to take everybody to be in our workforce and to be productive and to be upscale and working at their maximum potential,” he said.

Areas that need improvement, or what the report labeled as “red flags,” include education, particularly on the middle and high-school levels.  

The report, citing data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress test scores, indicated that in 2022, only 29% of Mainers in fourth grade scored “proficient or above” in reading. That’s below the national level of 32% and the New England level of 35%.  

Further, the report’s data showed, only 24% of 8th graders scored “proficient or above” in math, which is below the national level of 26% and the New England level of 28%.

The report offers suggestions, such as emulating the Telstar Freshman Academy model at Telstar High School in Maine, which the 2022 class valedictorian, Eleanor Hoff, said was instrumental for her and her classmates’ success.  

In his remarks Wednesday, Breen reinforced the report’s constructive intent, stressing that the point was not to criticize teachers or staff members at Maine schools.

“We are not pointing the finger or blaming,” he said. “We know that Maine has one of the finest teaching corps in the country, and that this is job one every single day.”

Children’s mental and behavioral health was another of the report’s red flags. In the school year 2020-2021, 28.9% of students “had a diagnosed mental, emotional, and/or behavioral condition such as anxiety, depression, a learning disability or autism.”  

The figure was up from 28.5% recorded in the previous year. The number has consistently been higher than the national average, according to the report’s data, since the 2017-2018 school year.

Not all the report’s news was bad, however. Three issues that were once called “red flags” in previous reports – wages, the number of Mainers with post-secondary degrees and availability of Internet access – were all higher in 2022.

Heather Johnson, commissioner of the state’s Department of Economic and Community Development, said she felt the notable improvement in higher education was particularly important.

“It is directly correlated to people’s ability to plug directly into the workforce and increase their personal wages which is really important,” she said. 

Johnson said there are few obstacles for Mainers to continue seeking higher education, outside of driving awareness.

“It’s really about making sure that people can see themselves in that and recognize that there are opportunities for them,” she said.