Every place from Dothan, Ala., to tropical Samoa claims a strong one

Do Mainers really have such a great work ethic?

I asked our editors that at a recent meeting, and it was as if I had just placed a skunk on the table.

Asking uncomfortable questions is, of course, a reporter’s stock in trade. We are trained to question convention, to challenge assumptions and to dig beyond the bureaucratic babble. It’s what makes us so endearing to politicians.

But this question seemed to strike a nerve, even among normally skeptical editors. I wasn’t asking the question just to get a rise out of the native Mainers around our table, which I certainly accomplished.

Several local employers raised the question after I wrote about our coverage of the working poor.

The employers reported having jobs that pay between $10 and $15 per hour. A livable wage in Androscoggin County, by the way, was considered to be $8.73 for a single person in 2004, $13.96 for a single person with a child, and $11.15 for two people with two children. The average Maine wage for workers with a high school degree was $11.84.

So, these seemed to be decent jobs. However, the employers said, many applicants wilt when they hear they must work nights or weekends.

Is there a story there, I asked our editors? It seemed like a fair question to me. Is the work ethic in Maine really that strong?

A lively discussion ensued.

Maybe, one editor pointed out, the people interviewed would have to hire child care to work nights or weekends, and the jobs just don’t pay enough to cover that. Or, maybe, it’s the only time they get to spend with their spouse and children. Or, perhaps, they would lose state health care benefits.

Yes, good points all.

To fairly approach this story we would have to interview each of the reluctant job candidates to find out why they turned the job down. Obviously, that would be impossible.

We would have been left stringing together unchallenged anecdotes from various employers with no way to check the accuracy of their assertions.

But, of course, that’s usually what we do when we talk to poor people about their hardships. We don’t check on their work ethic. We can’t know whether they squander their money on cigarettes, alcohol and lottery tickets. We simply trust them to tell us the truth.

That’s why I always distrust anecdotes, and I suggest that you distrust them, too. The news – all news, not just the Sun Journal news – is full of them.

One mother’s story. One soldier’s story. One elderly person’s story. We say, in the Sun Journal newsroom, that we put a “human face on a story.” Without a human voice, reading about poverty or Social Security or prescription drugs, can seem like a course in statistics – very, very dull.

But a story unbalanced by research and the voices of experts can also be very, very misleading.

A well-structured news story has both living examples and empirical evidence, and you should look for both when you are watching TV, cruising the Web or reading the Sun Journal.

Back to my original question: Does Maine have a strong work ethic?

I told the assembled editors that I have lived in small towns in four states and, from what I’ve observed, work ethics are about the same everywhere. Some individuals have them, and some do not.

A good work ethic is too mushy a concept to accurately generalize about, and I can prove it. Fire up Google on your computer and search for “work ethic” and “economic development.”

You will see that practically every place on God’s green earth touts its “work ethic.”

Most often, states and towns say their work ethic is “strong,” although North Dakota flatly says it has the “best work ethic in the nation.”

One place in Ohio has a “pioneer work ethic,” and many Web sites have testimonials from employers about the strong or positive work ethic found locally. In Chicago, you can find a “Protestant work ethic” and, if I searched long enough, I could probably find a Catholic work ethic there, too.

I found a “Hindu work ethic” in California’s Silicone Valley, which the author said, was really a “workaholic” work ethic. And, there were plenty of stories about Asian students in California outworking native Americans.

And this isn’t limited to the U.S. Japan has a “legendary work ethic,” and even the economic developers of tropical Samoa say employers are surprised by their strong work ethic.

So, if we are hoping our work ethic alone will bring jobs to Maine, we may be waiting a long time. And, I would argue, that “quality of life” won’t save us, either. Plug that into Google and see what you get. Yep, everyone has that, too.

Unfortunately, 20-degree temperatures and 4 inches of snow in November may not seem like a “quality experience” to some people.

What, then, does matter? I’d say a highly trained workforce and a business-friendly tax code are tough to beat. Both are measurable and, in both areas, we struggle to measure up.

I’ve probably hired 300 people over the years, and I’ve only found one fairly faithful predictor of a good work ethic: A kid raised on a farm.

Unfortunately, there are fewer and fewer farms these days – their kids have all been hired by people like me.