A monument commemorates war veterans at the intersection of Main Street, Tuttle Road and Blanchard Road in Cumberland. New census data indicates Cumberland is now the wealthiest Portland suburb. Ben McCanna/Portland Press Herald

For the last few years, have you been complaining about all the people, with their high-paying remote jobs, who moved here from out of state during the pandemic and bought up all the houses? Or is that just me?

It turns out, among the some 40,000 people who moved to Maine from a different state between 2019 and 2023, the median individual income was $35,065, about $3,000 less than that of the state as a whole, and only about a fifth of them make over $75,000, the highest bracket represented on the 2019-2023 American Community Survey, released last month.

This is what I love about census data; it can dispel or confirm notions that we have about the world around us based on our biased perceptions. Although the census releases new data annually, the one-year surveys are less reliable and only capture populations over 20,000. This latest five-year survey, it seemed to me, would start to give us a better picture of how our towns, cities and state changed during and after the pandemic.

As I scoured tables and compared data points with five years prior, I thought I was uncovering all sorts of fascinating factoids about our state: Could Dayton, and not one of the coastal towns, really be the wealthiest in York County? Why might Livermore Falls have the lowest median age in Maine?

And then I looked at the margins of error, which rendered many of my discoveries statistically meaningless.

It made me question the point of doing these surveys at all. (How could it help anyone to know there are eight Maltese people in Maine, give or take nine?) But instead of abandoning my research, I decided to narrow my findings down to a few of the more reliable nuggets, then asked people in the know about whether their observations matched the estimates.

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Here are some of the U.S. Census Bureau’s best guesses about what we look like now, along with what Mainers had to say about them.

PORTLAND’S NEW WEALTHIEST SUBURB?

Cape Elizabeth and Falmouth have consistently had the highest median incomes of Portland’s suburbs in recent years, but for the first time, Cumberland topped them both.

The town’s estimated median household income of $154,375 represents a 40% increase in five years — and, even when accounting for the most extreme margins of error, there’s still a rise in wealth that secures its place among the top six richest Cumberland County towns (with Scarborough, North Yarmouth and Freeport also in contention).

Cumberland’s ascent in affluence didn’t come as a surprise to Teddy Piper, broker/owner of Portland-based real estate agency Re/Max By the Bay.

“Part of it is, it was undervalued for a long time,” he said.

A sign at a rotary in Falmouth points the way to Cumberland. Ben McCanna/Portland Press Herald

As to why it’s getting wealthier now, Piper pointed to Greely High School’s corresponding jump in U.S. News and World Report rankings. In 2020, the school serving Cumberland and North Yarmouth shot up several spots to No. 1 on the list of best high schools in Maine, a title it still holds today.

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Piper said good schools provide “insulation from market volatility.” That — along with the public beach, pier and walking trails that the town purchased in 2014 and since has been improving — may have attracted new residents in recent years.

Plus, he said, people moving from out of state could like that Cumberland is “a little bit more rural, perhaps more authentic to the Maine they have in their mind” than a suburb like Falmouth.

And judging by the failed affordable housing referendum last year, it appears most residents would like to keep it just the way it is.

FEWER IDENTIFY AS FRANCO-AMERICAN

Although Maine is still vying with Vermont for whitest state in the nation, race estimates show that it is slowly getting more diverse (down about 3 percentage points from five years earlier to just over 91% white). The portion of residents with two or more races, meanwhile, doubled to 4.7%.

Among Mainers with European roots, there’s also been a significant change. Historical census data shows that the population of French and French-Canadian descendants has long outnumbered any other ancestral identity, but the latest estimates indicate a significant decline in that combined group — down between 11% and 20% since 2018, when accounting for margins of error, and dropping below the number of people with English ancestry.

The question on the survey is broad and open-ended — “What is this person’s ancestry or ethnic origin?” — and at least a couple of experts believe the change could be attributed to fewer people filling in the blank, rather than a shrinking population of Franco-Americans.

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Anna Faherty, archivist at the University of Southern Maine’s Franco-American Collection in Lewiston, said she’s noticed when speaking to students, from kindergarten to college age, that not as many identify as French.

Archivist Anna Faherty oversees the Franco-American Collection at the University of Southern Maine’s Lewiston-Auburn College in 2022. Daryn Slover/Sun Journal

“But then when you say, ‘What do you call your grandmother,’ they say, ‘Memere,'” she said.

Her predecessor, James Myall, who co-authored “The Franco-Americans of Lewiston-Auburn,” agreed, noting that the number of Mainers who didn’t identify any ancestry in the survey in the same time frame also grew, and he speculated there was a significant amount of French people who moved into that category.

Yvonne Gallucci holds her mémère crown steady on her head in 2019 after a pageant at the 37th annual La Kermesse Festival in Biddeford that celebrates Franco-American culture. Brianna Soukup/Portland Press Herald

But while Faherty attributed the change to assimilation, Myall thought it might have to do with the underrepresentation of Franco culture nationally (compared with the Irish, most evident on St. Patrick’s Day, and Italians, with their ubiquitous cuisine), as well as lingering anti-French discrimination — including the internalized kind, like in self-deprecating comments made by former Gov. Paul LePage.

“None of that is new in the last five years,” Myall said, so it can’t completely explain the recent change. “But all that context does make me think that Franco identity is both easier to lose and carries more negative baggage than some other groups.”

OLDEST TOWN GETS OLDER

Aside from its whiteness, Maine’s other consistent census superlative is its oldness, boasting the highest median age in the country at 44.9 years old.

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Piscataquis County comes in at the oldest with a median age of 51.4 years old, and the oldest town there — Beaver Cove, just north of Greenville — clocks in at a ripe 71. Even with the margin of error, most of the town would be eligible for Social Security.

A bull moose crosses a logging road in 2021 near Kokajo, just north of Beaver Cove, on the eastern side of Moosehead Lake. Robert F. Bukaty/Associated Press

Home to Lily Bay State Park on the eastern shore of Moosehead Lake, Beaver Cove doesn’t have many other amenities or businesses, aside from a marina and a bunch of vacation rentals. With recent turnover at the town office, it was hard to get anyone to talk about whether Beaver Cove’s population is showing its age or what about it might attract older residents.

But there are other indicators that support the census estimate, including that the data from five years ago put the median age at 66.5 and that the Greenville-area school district reports there are still just two families with school-age kids from Beaver Cove.

Although the town website says there are just under 100 year-round residents, the census estimates there are at least a couple hundred. Maybe people were still isolating in their second homes when the surveys landed in their mailboxes. Looking at Beaver Cove’s 2023 property tax bills online, most were addressed elsewhere in Maine or out of state.

Ah, that’s who’s buying up all the houses.

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