This month, Maine Monitor education and workforce development reporter Kristian Moravec and senior public health reporter Rose Lundy talked about their recent reporting with deputy editor Stephanie McFeeters.
Maine has had success in adopting heat pumps across the state, and jobs have grown quickly — particularly in rural areas, Moravec reported. But as the state approaches big deadlines for heat pump installation and bolstering its clean energy workforce, uncertainties lie ahead.
The state needs employ more than 14,000 new workers to reach its goal of 30,000 clean energy jobs by the end of the decade. Between 2019 and 2023, the number of workers in the field grew by less than a thousand.
While the state says it remains dedicated to this goal, some in the industry worry federal funding cuts and tariffs could create challenges for the workforce development pipeline.
Meanwhile, on the health care front, Lundy recently reported how Maine’s health care workforce is diversifying.
Between 2014 and 2024, the number of Black, American Indian, Asian and Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander employees across the health care sector increased 143 percent, while the number of White employees increased by less than half a percent, according to a Maine Monitor analysis of data from the state Department of Labor and U.S. Census Bureau. People of color — who made up about 4 percent of the workforce in 2014 — now make up 10 percent.
Experts and health care providers said this trend mirrors the state becoming more racially diverse, driven largely by an influx of new immigrants who often turn to health care as a way into the workforce, drawn by flexible hours and lower barriers to entry.
You can listen to the episode here. Tune in to listen live the first Thursday of every month at 4 p.m. on WERU 89.9 FM.
