Maine Good Jobs Report

March 3rd, 2007 Posted by Mark

Maine seems to be a good place for employers at the moment, at least according to some of the sources that I have been seeing and hearing from lately. The Governor there, John Baldacci, has the Council on Jobs, Innovation and the Economy doing a study on the job growth situation and the state of the Maine economy. The resulting report, or an interim report actually to be specific, says that the state should fund something called cluster development at the rate of $10 million a year, with that money being open to all industries and employers.

The plan has already been partly put in place by the governor for some employers and some industries. For instance, the governor gave a $15 million so called Wired Grant to the state boating industry in order to help that industry and its employers grow and diversify.

The Council on Jobs, Innovation and the Economy was actually set up by the governor last year to come up with an action plan on how to get the industries in the state moving toward innovation, and how to develop these cluster development projects that we are talking about. It is all a matter of how the state is to invest its money in the Maine industries and employers, and how that money could help make your company stronger.

The way the state looks to be going forward with this cluster development is to put $3 million aside for it in the budget this first year, and then dedicate another $5 million for it in the following year. As employers, of course, you will not be able to go after that money in a free for all, but if you consider yourself an innovative employer in your industry, and a strong producer of job growth, it cannot hurt to have this development plan in mind when contacting government officials.

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Human Resource New Hire Reporting in Maine

December 13th, 2006 Posted by Mark

Maine only gives its employers seven days after the start of a new hire to report the new employee to their government. Maine then matches up all of the information that employers send to it about new hires with the state’s child support records. Then the state sends its information to the National Directory of New Hires, which can help the government track delinquent child support payments to the adults at fault for them.

When it comes to how the state defines you guys—the employers in Maine—the state’s labor laws follow the same guidelines that the federal tax guidelines do when it comes to defining employers. An employer can also include a government organization or a labor organization too.

If you fit this bill—and if you have employees, chances are you do—you are required to report new hires, according to the Maine labor laws, within seven days of the first day that the new employee works for you for pay.

This includes a person you may have once had on your staff but then laid off or in another case, they took a leave of absence. Once you re-hire that person, the key ingredient in determining if you need to file a new hire report on them is whether or not you need them to file a new W-4 form in their employee file. On the other hand, if the employee never got removed from your payroll records, and never was officially terminated, then you don’t have to fill out a new W-4 form and thus don’t have to report them to the state of Maine as a new hire.

But if you do, you can report in Maine in a number of ways. You can send in their W-4 form, send in your own personnel record by e-mail or diskette or online as long as it contains the necessary information, or follow the instructions set up by the state for their official form.

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