S2E2 Interview with Maine State Economist Amanda Rector

In this second episode of Maine Policy Matters Season 2, Eric Miller interviews Amanda Rector, the Maine state economist since 2011. Rector describes what it was like to be the state economist during the pandemic, how things turned out compared to how she originally thought they would turn out, the effects from the federal response to the pandemic, changes in the workplace, and makes predictions for the future.

Maine State Economist Amanda Rector Transcript 

Miller: Welcome to your main Policy Matters podcast from the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center at the University of Maine. I am Eric Miller, Research Associate at the Center. 

Today we have with us Amanda Rector, State economist since 2011. In her role as state economist, she analyzes Maine's economic and demographic conditions to help inform policy decisions. 

Rector is a member of the state of Maine Revenue Forecasting Committee and serves as the Governor's Liaison to the US Census Bureau. 

Amanda Rector has published an essay in the Maine Policy Review entitled, “(Un)precedented: Reflecting on the Early Lessons of the COVID-19 Pandemic”, which you can find of reading of right here on the Maine Policy Matters podcast. Her essay details her personal experience with the pandemic and her journey from unprecedented to precedented times. 

She explains how research has given us a historical reference point for the pandemic, saying we will be talking with Rector about her thoughts on what has changed since those first days of the pandemic. 

[Background music] 

Miller: Firstly, thanks so much for joining us today. 

 

Rector: It's my pleasure. 

 

Miller: To start with an easy one, can you describe for us a bit what it was like to be the state economist in those early days of the pandemic? 

 

Rector: Well, I suddenly became a lot more popular. It's funny how a pandemic and recession will make economists suddenly people that everybody wants to talk to. You know, I think that one of the things in the early days, everyone was scrambling to get a sense of what was happening and scrambling to get data. And so, in some senses, there was this sort of drinking from the firehose effect of just everybody trying to grab onto any piece of information they possibly could. 

So, I felt like I was spending hour upon hour just reading things that were in some cases completely foreign to me. I had not done a lot of reading about pandemics in the past - not in my usual wheelhouse. 

And then I started just - I think one of the advantages to Maine is that because it's that, it's that sort of big, small town feel. Everybody is willing to just pick up the phone and talk. And so I spent a lot of time just getting on the phone saying, “Hey, you know? What are you seeing? What's happening in your field? Are you seeing things going on in your businesses? What are you worried about? What are you concerned is going to happen that you're not going to be able to come back from or recover from?  

And you know, it was really challenging to try to wrap my arms around everything that was going on in a fashion that I could then condense that and share helpful information with the folks who are making policy decisions. 

 

Miller: Yeah, I can't even imagine. I can't say that I heard too much from a state economist prior to the pandemic myself and I have a masters in economics, so it really has been interesting to observe how the ground has shifted in so many ways over the past two years. 

What surprised you over the past two years now that we're in a different part of the pandemic, did any of what you predicted in your piece come true, or what did we get right? We need to work out. 

 

Rector: You know, I think we thought it was going to be a lot worse than it really was in economic terms, particularly at the very beginning. 

And if you look back at some of