Large hospitals all over New Hampshire say they can't maintain current staffing levels given the state's budget cuts..
Yesterday, we posted the blog equivalent of a highlights reel for a New York Times article. The newspaper’s piece examined how state and federal budget cuts are taking the steam out of the health care industry’s role as one of the country’s few job creators. Eliot Health System in Manchester got a mention, as the provider blames state Medicaid cuts for forcing it to layoff 182 workers.
“Officials at Catholic Medical Center say the change in reimbursement means the non-profit hospital must come up with $12 million dollars to pay to the state by October.
Hospital CEO Alyson Pitman Giles says CMC tried to eliminate jobs that would preserve patient services.”
The 3,500 Bank of America job cuts follow 2,500 other cuts earlier this year.
Reporting on the big business news of the day–Bank of America cutting 3,500 jobs–Todd Wallack of the Boston Globe digs into possible regional fallout:
“Bank of America declined to comment on the prospect of further job reductions or say how many of the job cuts will occur in New England.
But Massachusetts will likely be affected because it is one of the company’s largest centers of operations behind North Carolina and New York. In July, Bank of America said it plans to close a printing operation in Malden by next spring, eliminating 150 local jobs.
The bank has roughly 7,000 employees in the state, more than other retail banks, but down from 9,000 in 2007, before the financial crisis and recession took its toll on the banking industry.”
According to New Hampshire Bankers Association President Jerry Little, B of A is one of four large regional, super-regional or (in this case) national banks in the state. Citizens, TD Bank, and People’s United are the others.
This week, Comcast invited business leaders, elected officials, and the media to an event at the company’s new warehouse and inspection station in Salem, NH. Although the facility officially “opened” on August 17th, it had actually been up and running for a couple of months. (The Boston Globe ran a story about the facility two days before the opening.) But, as Comcast of Greater Boston Senior Vice President Steve Hackley explained in an interview with State Impact, the company wanted to wait until the warehouse was out of trial phase before making its big splash. It’s especially important since the high-tech inspection program is new, and Hackley said there are no more than three other, similar facilities across the country.
It’s been a busy week on the rural economy beat, thanks to President Obama’s newly-released rural jobs initiative. As part of that push today, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced a series of rural development grants and loans awarded to states as part of the clunkily-named “USDA Rural Development’s Community Facilities Program.” The idea, Vilsack said, was to stimulate rural economies by offering short-term construction jobs and longer-term work to maintenance contractors. The Community Facilities program is financing a wide variety of construction and upgrades for schools, childcare centers, hospitals and emergency services.
All told, about $55 million in funding was spread out over 31 states and Puerto Rico. New Hampshire scored $38,000 in grants. Continue Reading →
This week, New York Times reporters Reed Abelson and Katie Thomas took on a sticky issue–as the federal and state governments cut into health care funding their budgets can’t support, can the health care industry continue to generate much-needed jobs?
New Hampshire Department of Resources and Economic Development
New Hampshire's Business Development Manager Michael Bergeron was recently characterized as a business thief by The Boston Globe.
With the imminent closure of the Balsams Grand Resort in Dixville Notch, the issue of economic development in the North Country is once again on the state’s radar screen. The pulp mill industry is all but dead, along with a proposed large-scale biofuel plant. These complications mean that when the Balsams shutters next month, the loss of 300 jobs will hurt a depressed area even more. I recently talked with New Hampshire’s Business Development Manager, Michael Bergeron. Last month, Bergeron was profiled in The Boston Globe as a business thief, sneaking across the southern border to steal Massachusetts-based firms. Now, he tells State Impact the challenges he faces bringing outside businesses to the state in general, and the North Country in particular.
The New Hampshire Business Review has an interesting roundup of new state laws that went into effect last weekend. The main piece of legislation, Senate Bill 86, allows employers to get a warning for violating labor laws before the Department of Labor lays down a fine. But, there are definitely exceptions, as the NHBR notes:
J. Shephen Conn / Flickr
New labor laws went into effect last weekend. Among other things, businesses can now get warnings for violating most labor laws before getting fined by the Department of Labor.
Failure to pay workers full and on time
• Paychecks on a bank not convenient to the job site
• Failure to pay the last paycheck in full
• Failure to withhold wages for child support
• Deducting wages for insurance benefits when the policy has been canceled
• Holding wages to make up for worker’s actions that caused loss or damage
• Not complying with illegal immigrant laws
• Threatening to fire workers, unless they break the law
Oh yes, the Labor Department can also skip the warning if the employer ‘intends to cause harm” or if the violation “poses a threat to public safety.'”
Other new laws going into effect governed stormwater permits, fees for trailer park residents, and wine festivals.
Credit card delinquency rates are down, but it's a mixed bag when you take consumer debt into account.
“The national credit card delinquency rate, or rate of payments 90 days or more past due, fell to 0.60 percent in the second quarter, down from 0.92 percent a year ago. That’s the lowest rate since 1994, according to credit reporting agency TransUnion.
Delinquencies were expected to drop, but the improvement in that April to June period was faster than forecast.”
As for the cause of this rapid improvement, the piece cites people carrying fewer credit cards, banks maintaining stricter standards on credit card approval, and lower credit limits. Even though this is good news, however, the country’s consumer debt situation still isn’t great,
“TransUnion also saw higher card use, reflected in a slight uptick in the amount of debt card users carried during the quarter. The average combined total debt for all major credit cards increased by $20 from the first three months of the year, to $4,699 per borrower. Even so, that amount is down more than 5 percent from the $4,951 average in the second quarter of 2010, and is 16 percent lower than the peak average debt of $5,575 in the first quarter of 2009.”
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