The world of accounting operates in three-month chunks, making up calendars that might ring in the New Year in March, June, September or with the rest of us in the last minutes of December.
While the New Year is just another day in the business ledger, it’s a time when people set resolutions and newspaper reporters, economists and others set to either looking back or forward in one-year increments.
Predicting what will happen is best left to the Tarot deck, but the big questions that hang over the state’s economy give a sense of the expectations, hopes and challenges for 2015. And as new cycles don’t necessarily fall in line with business cycles, some of those questions are those for which, this year, we weren’t given an answer.
Looking to 2015, those lingering questions are:
Will Maine hit pre-recession job totals? While scrutiny of economic indicators will proceed as planned through 2015, the year when Maine would regain the payroll jobs lost since late 2007 has long been a source of speculation. The national tally of payroll jobs recovered to pre-recession figures in June, but Maine was still only about two-thirds of the way there at the end of 2014, based on the most recent estimates.
A lot of factors contribute to that, including Maine’s stagnant population growth and the fact that many of the industries that were hit hard but rebounded quickly from the recession aren’t located in Maine. If still down on the jobs count at the end of April 2015, the recession will be twice as long as any other on record, by that measure of recovery.
That pace has raised the question of whether the current way of measuring job creation and retention continues to be a reasonable benchmark for the state’s overall economic recovery. Some economists have pointed to ratio of people with jobs to the total population, where Maine’s ahead of the national average, as a better workforce measure.
The year will also show whether the pace of job growth in 2014 will continue after what turned out to be a better-than-expected year for job growth nationally.
Whether a drop in unemployment helps lead to any increase in wages in 2015 will be something to watch.
How will unions fare in 2015? Maine entered the new year with a still simmering dispute between FairPoint Communications and 1,700 of its employees in New England — one of six strikes in the country last year involving more than 1,000 employees — and likely challenges from Republican Gov. Paul LePage and a new Republican majority in the state Senate.
LePage has previously pursued so-called right-to-work legislation that enables workers represented in collective bargaining to opt out of paying dues, which the governor has touted as a way to attract big businesses.
The state and national unions threw strong organizational and financial support behind LePage’s Democratic opponent, Mike Michaud, which gives some indication of the challenges unions expected to face from a second term for LePage.
Other negotiations to watch will include talks between Bath Iron Works and its largest union about reducing costs in an effort to win new work from the Coast Guard. The parties are set to begin talks early in 2015 over cost-cutting that could include outsourcing some manufacturing of ship components.
Will the region craft an energy plan? The election also delivered some promise of renewed talks between the New England states about expanding natural gas capacity and building transmission projects to get more hydropower from Quebec and the Canadian maritimes onto New England’s grid.
State regulators will also have to make a decision on whether to put a new fee on all electric bills to help pay for one of three companies to expand its natural gas pipeline capacity into Maine.
Maine itself will have some major energy policy questions to sort out, which it could do for most of the year with a new majority on the Maine Public Utilities Commission, where Chairman Tom Welch retired early and Commissioner David Littell’s term is set to expire in March. LePage will nominate their successors, meaning that he will have named all three commissioners to the influential state regulatory board that oversees short- and long-term energy development and policymaking in Maine.
Those policy goals could include a fresh look at state rules around renewable energy, an area where Patrick Woodcock, the head of the Governor’s Energy Office, recently said laws need to reflect Maine’s regionally unique array of renewable power generation and where the New England states need to agree on just what kind of power generation qualifies as renewable.
This all comes as power prices are expected to rise in March for most residential customers and continue rising for small businesses and industrial customers who saw increases earlier this year.
Will former mill towns be able to turn the page on papermaking? Major questions hang over plans for former mill sites in Bucksport and the Katahdin region, where 2015 dawned with chances slim to none that papermaking might ever return.
Bucksport, Millinocket and East Millinocket will take the lead in shaping how the state deals with upheaval in the global papermaking industry. The closures pose tough questions that likely won’t come in the form of one answer or one year.
Meanwhile, mills in Rumford and Old Town will have owners new — or mostly new — to the state. The Canadian Catalyst Paper Corp. will run the Rumford mill and the Wisconsin-based Expera Specialty Solutions, which has a contract to produce paper at Verso’s Jay mill, bought the pulpmaking assets of the former Old Town Fuel and Fiber in a bankruptcy sale.
The town of Pittsfield will face similar challenges with the shutdown of United Technologies Corp.’s Fire and Security plant, resulting in layoffs of about 300 workers, expected in the second quarter of 2015.
How will hospitals and businesses weather health care changes? The federal mandate for major employers to offer health insurance is due to take effect in 2015. At the same time, a question hangs over whether the U.S. Supreme Court will uphold federal subsidies for health insurance plans bought on Maine’s federally run insurance marketplace.
Meanwhile, the state’s hospitals will continue to adapt to changes in reimbursement schemes under the Affordable Care Act.
And the results of consolidation of Maine hospitals will also continue to play out. The Portland-based Mercy Health System said recently it turned around years of operating losses in 2014, in the first fiscal year since it became a part of Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems in 2013.
To their health, and yours, in 2015.