DAMARISCOTTA, Maine — Robert Harper, 23, took a path manufacturers in Maine hope others will follow.

On Thursday morning, he was applying a layer of fiberglass fabric to the underside of what will become the forward cabin in one of Hodgdon Yachts’ high-end custom seafaring vessels made in part at the company’s newest location in Damariscotta, where Harper works full time.





“I’ve always been very hands-on and wanted to go home each day and know that I’ve made something,” said Harper, who took composites courses at Southern Maine Community College.

The company’s new Damariscotta facility builds smaller ships taken aboard superyachts built for the superwealthy around the world, one of five divisions at the company.

Audrey Hodgdon, the company’s marketing director and a sixth-generation employee of the company started in 1816, said demand for its limousine tender line was prompted by growth of superyachts too big to access certain desired harbors and waterways around the world.

That growth has driven some hiring at the company, which has about 10 to 15 open spots, according to Neal Williamson, Hodgdon’s human resources director and past chief operating officer of the Jobs for Maine’s Graduates program.

He said the number of students like Harper isn’t yet sufficient to fill a need for increasingly skilled manufacturing jobs in the state.

“We have the jobs and people to teach the skills, but there’s nobody coming through the pipeline,” Williamson said.

Williamson said the opening of Hodgdon Yachts’ facilities in Damariscotta about 18 months ago and in Richmond about five years ago have given the company headquartered down at the end of the Boothbay peninsula access to a wider workforce in the state, which has helped.

But there still is a need to bring in young workers.

Survey says: Jobs are there

Hodgdon is one of many manufacturers in the state with jobs to fill. Williamson said Hodgdon’s roughly 10 to 15 openings result from a recent contract.

A survey by the Manufacturers Association of Maine recently found 39 manufacturing employers had a collective 886 jobs open since January, with 63 percent of those openings at L.L. Bean in Freeport.

Another 108 of those openings were at Bath Iron Works. The survey results represented a sliver of the 179 manufacturing association members polled.

Derek Volk, vice chairman of the association’s board and owner of Volk Packaging in Biddeford, said the group hopes to amplify outreach about the job opportunities available in manufacturing at its annual conference Thursday, June 4, at Pineland Farms.

“One of the issues that the manufacturing community has is this image of manufacturing as dark and dirty and greasy,” Volk said. “That’s not what manufacturing is today.”

And a manufacturing base such as at L.L. Bean, Volk said, can help support a range of jobs in sales, marketing and other departments up and down the supply chain.

In the past 25 years, manufacturing has been the hardest hit and seen the highest percentage job loss of any workforce sector in Maine. That comes as global competition in manufacturing increases and technology changes.

While manufacturing isn’t the employment powerhouse it once was for Maine’s economy, Volk argued jobs in manufacturing are less likely than other sectors to migrate out of state.

Manufacturing jobs also provide decent wages, Volk said. The average earnings for the open positions discovered in the survey was $49,300.

“[Manufacturers] do close down and they move, but it is a lot harder to move a manufacturer than a call center,” Volk said.

Volk said the goal of the conference is to increase the connection between educators, students and manufacturing employers, largely through a program called “Dream It, Do It,” launched by the manufacturers association in 2012.

Last year, the program hosted events that involved more than 600 students and 70 educators, and it plans to expand to all 16 counties this year.

“We need to target kids in middle school, so when they start looking at college they’ve been exposed to what manufacturing is today,” Volk said.

Volk said the conference will poll attendees for recommendations of what government could do to help foster growth in manufacturing, to deliver to lawmakers and Gov. Paul LePage as a guide in the next legislative session.

Reaching out early

Williamson said, from his past work at Jobs for Maine’s Graduates, that the United States is behind other countries in helping younger students identify career paths.

“If you want to be a carpenter or do something with your hands, you’re stuck until 11th grade before you can do that,” Williamson said.

And from a practical perspective, Williamson said that effort would be best when done locally, as having some connection to Maine or New England makes it more likely employees will stick around.

“You need people locally or with someone with some affinity for the state of Maine,” Williamson said, noting Hodgdon Yachts has had “some success” hiring from outside of New England.

Williamson said he has worked with counselors and students at the Kenneth Foster Regional Vocational Center, which he said is the only tech school in the state currently offering courses in composites manufacturing.

He said he also has gone to high school career fairs around the state and sought to draw more students from the composites program at Southern Maine Community College, with the goal of bridging a gap in knowledge that could come if current skilled workers retire in the next 10 to 20 years without passing along the tools of the trade.

“That’s why we’re working with students,” Williamson said. “We’re on a short window for them to learn from the masters of the trade.”