WASHINGTON — Maine has a lot of lobsters. It also has many older people, who increasingly have less will and ability to fish, clean and sell the crustaceans that constitute a billion-dollar industry for the State. Companies are turning to foreign-born workers to close the gap.
“People born in Maine generally don’t look for jobs in manufacturing, especially food,” said Ben Conniff, founder of Luke’s Lobster. Employees at the company’s lobster processing plant in Saco, Maine, have been primarily immigrants since it opened in 2013.
Maine has the oldest population of any US state, with an average age of 45.1 years. As the U.S. ages, the state offers a preview of what it could look like economically — and the critical role immigrants will likely play in filling gaps in the labor market that will be created as native-born workers retire.
The huge flows of immigrants that began in 2022 have been straining state and local resources across the United States and taking political tolls. But the influx is also boosting the potential of the American economy. Employers are hiring quickly in part because of incoming labor supply. The US Congressional Budget Office has also raised its economic and population growth projections for the next decade in light of the wave of newcomers.
In Maine, companies are starting to turn to immigrants to fill gaps in factories and skilled trades. State lawmakers are working to create an Office of New Americans to attract and integrate immigrants into the workforce.
Private companies are also focusing on the issue. The founders of Luke’s Lobster started an initiative, Lift All Boats, in 2022 to teach minorities and others outside the industry how to fish for lobster and how to navigate the complex licensing process. About half of the participants were born abroad.
Among them was Chadai Gatembo, 18, who came to Maine two years ago from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Gatembo learned English, got a work permit and is about to graduate high school. He would like to attend college, but he enjoyed learning how to fish for lobster last summer. He plans to do it again this year, considering the possibility of one day becoming a full-time lobsterman.
“All the immigrants, people from different countries, moved here looking for opportunities,” Gatembo said. “I have many interests—lobster is one of them.”
Maine is seeing an increase in immigration. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the United States added 3.3 million immigrants last year and will add another 3.3 million in 2024, compared to the usual 900,000 in the years before the pandemic.
Ernie Tedeschi, a researcher at Yale Law School, estimates that the American workforce would have declined by about 1.2 million people from 2019 to the end of 2023 due to the aging population, but immigration has allowed it to grow by 2 million.
There is a lot of uncertainty. No one knows how long the current large immigration flows will last. The economy could also slow down. If that happened, fewer immigrants might want to come to the United States, and those who did might have difficulty finding work.
At the Luke’s Lobster plant, Conniff has often had difficulty finding enough staff over the years. But he has hired people like Chenda Chamreoun, 30, who came to the United States from Cambodia in 2013 and rose from lobster cleaner to quality control supervisor while she learned English.
Now she is in the process of opening her own catering business. She said moving to the United States was a challenge, but she had taught her how to achieve her goals.
“You have more abilities than you think,” he said.
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