As you might expect of people in the information business, we are big fans of information. We like facts and figures of all kinds, whether from the immediately relevant, like mil rates and planned road projects, to the unusual or mindlessly irrelevant.
We are taking a particular interest in the U.S. Census Bureau information, reviewed for us this week by Lincoln County Planner Bob Faunce.
More so than any political persuasion, the Census provides us with a hard, cold look at where we are right now, or more accurately, where we were for a moment in 2010.
By and large, the headline confirms for us what we already knew: demographically, Lincoln County is the oldest county by population, in the oldest state in the nation.
Based on Faunce’s reading of the tea leaves, indications are Maine generally (and Lincoln County specifically) may be approaching a tipping point, wherein the infrastructure of employment and affordable accommodations may not support the infrastructure of business and services necessary to make a community go.
If the numbers are right, and if Faunce is right, we may be in for long-term trouble. We already knew that good jobs are hard to come by, but what we had forgotten or conveniently overlooked, is the kind of jobs with which people can build and support a family – the steady, long-term, gainful employment that supplies a decent paycheck that affords food and amenities – are scarce and getting scarcer.
In short, if people can’t afford to live here, as much as they might like to, they won’t live here. That, as much as any short-term, poll-tipping political dog and pony show, is a long-term concern.
