Maine Job Creation from the In-or-Out Migration of Establishments
Read the full report | What is Maine’s business climate? That is an age-old question usually answered with one anecdote or another. Depending on one’s vantage point, Maine’s business climate could be too hot, too cold or just about right. Unfortunately, creating public policy using anecdotes often leads to a “shotgun” approach to legislation where a lot of tiny problems gets addressed but no one is able to put together a view of the bigger picture. A large part of the problem has been a lack of detailed empirical data on Maine’s businesses—until now.
This study is the fourth of many studies that will use a powerful new database of Maine’s businesses called the National Establishment Time-Series (NETS) Database. NETS is based on the far-reaching Duns & Bradstreet Marketing Information file that has nationally tracked more than 36.5 million establishments between 1989 and 2007. The file tracks businesses via an assigned “DUNS number,” the business equivalent of a personal Social Security number. As such, the NETS database is the most comprehensive establishment-level census available.
Maine’s state level file contains data for 161,351 commercial, not-for-profit and government establishments between 1989 and 2007. As of 2007, approximately half of those establishments (84,326) still exist with the remainder having either closed, moved out-of-state, or consolidated. These Maine establishments, in 2007, employed 702,028 people.
Every year in Maine, establishments move into the state while others move out of the state. Understanding this dynamic process relating to the movement of organizations, hereafter “in- and out-migration,” of establishments is vital to ensuring public policy aids rather than hinders job creation.