It’s that time of the week again! We’ve rounded-up the Top Five StateImpact posts that crowd wisdom decided were on this week’s must-read list.
How Junk Mail Is Helping To Prop Up The Postal Service: After a brief hiatus from our Most-Read roundup, this post is back! It’s a combination of humor, hard facts, and shameless name-dropping of the kitschy-ist catalogs cluttering your mailboxes. In short, find out why Fingerhut matters more than most people know.
Why NH’s Waterfront Market Might Be On The Rebound: What a welcome you gave new StateImpact reporter Emily Corwin for her inaugural post! This piece puts a brief uptick in Lakes Region waterfront properties into perspective, examining whether it’s actually cause for optimism, or just a flash in the pan.
Three Reasons Why It’s Boom Time For NH Manufacturers: The Brookings Institution recently released a report delving into the relationship between geography and manufacturing. The upshot? New Hampshire’s fabrication renaissance is no accident.
GE Aviation Plant Manager Doug Folsom is struggling to fill jobs on the factory floor.
Nationally, there are about 600,000 unfilled factory jobs. But despite high unemployment, many of these jobs are proving difficult for employers to fill.
That’s because American manufacturers are increasingly looking for workers with specialized skills. And those skills can take a long time for workers to learn.
Take GE Aviation in Hooksett, New Hampshire. With 720 workers, it’s one of the largest employers in the state. GE’s factory is super-advanced, making parts for commercial planes, military fighter jets, and Blackhawk helicopters. But it’s not the intricately machined parts that stand out when you wander the factory floor. Instead, it is a sea of gray hair.
Advanced manufacturing work is often highly-skilled and detail-oriented
Ramping-up federal funding for highly skilled, computerized advanced manufacturing training at community colleges is a key part of President Obama’s jobs initiative. In a recent budget proposal, he pushed for creating an $8 billion Community College to Career fund. Among other things, it would increase training for advanced manufacturing. That sits well with a number of large companies, who say there are up to 600,000 jobs available on factory floors right now, but not enough qualified workers to fill them.
In a story that aired on NHPR, I looked into this so-called “skills gap,” and why it’s a lot more complicated than a shortage of qualified workers. Following that feature, I spoke with Morning Edition host Rick Ganley about why there’s some skepticism about taxpayers funding corporate training through community colleges. Continue Reading →
Yesterday the New Hampshire House of Representatives passed a bill allowing the sale of specialty beer in New Hampshire. As a spokesperson from Red Hook Brewery in Portsmouth explained to me, until now breweries were unable to brew or distribute in N.H. beers containing either over 6 percent alcohol, or spice and fruit ingredients. This forced the brewery to outsource jobs to nearby states, and incurred significant extra costs. Although “it’s not a light-switch,” the spokesperson explained, Red Hook plans to bring operations back to N.H. as they strategize for the future.
This is good timing for American Craft Beer Week! And if you’re a history buff, keep your eyes open for Red Hook’s historic ale recipe, created through a partnership with Exeter’s Independence Museum.
In 1974 — the middle of an economic recession — President Ford introduced the Tax Reduction of 1975, hoping that tax cuts would stimulate the economy. The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) became federal law the following year, and has grown since. By last year, a family with two children who earned under $40,964 was eligible for a federal tax credit of up to $5,112. Back in the 1980s, states began to add their own EITCs to supplement the federal program. By 2009, 24 states had a statewide EITC. Since New Hampshire doesn’t have a state income tax, it’s natural to assume the state wouldn’t have an EITC, and it doesn’t. But that hasn’t stopped the state of Washington, whose new EITC goes into effect this year.
This past Tuesday the University of New Hampshire’s Carsey Institute issued a brief about the impact of statewide EITCs on children of eligible families. It turns out the effects are substantial — and sometimes counter-intuitive. According to the Carsey Institute, statewide EITC programs are associated with: Continue Reading →
Farmer Charles Reid of Osprey Cove Organic Farm in Madbury, N.H. says getting local food onto restaurant menus is not always easy. That’s where Portsmouth non-profit Seacoast Local comes in. Kind of like a matchmaker, it tries to connect locally owned restaurants with regional farmers. This summer the organization is hosting a fundraising series of “Field and Spoon” dinners at farms near the Seacoast.
Charles Reid’s farm is one of them. He says local farmers are competing with “the big farm at Logan Airport,” meaning produce flown in year-round from Mexico and California. And while New Hampshire’s neighbors in Vermont have been sourcing food locally for decades, Granite Staters are only now just coming around, thanks to hot-button issues like pink slime. As of an April 2010 report from the University of New Hampshire, only 12 percent of food sold in New Hampshire comes directly from farmers. That’s pretty high compared to the national average of .05 percent, but nowhere near what the UNH report says it could be.
Some restaurants have committed whole-hog (no pun intended), like Young’s Restaurant and Coffee Shop in Durham, which — along with other Portsmouth restaurants — clears out farmer Charles Reid’s stock at every farmers market. Others, like the T-Bones restaurant franchise in Laconia, only source a few products such as maple syrup and beer. Why? Jay Bolduc at T-Bones put it this way: “One of the roadblocks is the logistics of getting things on a regular delivery schedule in the quantity that restaurants our size go through.”
Seacoast Local is hoping to help ease concerns like Bolduc’s, making partnerships between restaurants, farms, and local businesses throughout the region.
Is the real estate market heating up along Lake Winnipesaukee?
“Could the era of numerous big dollar waterfront sales be returning?” That’s the question Roy Sanborn, a realtor in Meredith, NH, posed in a column on Saturday in the Laconia Daily Sun.
According to data compiled for the month of April from the Northern New England Real Estate MLS System, the average sales price of a home on Lake Winnepesaukee — $2.15-million — was more than double the average sales price last April.
Paula Hinckley of Lady of the Lake Realty in Sanbornton says her experience selling waterfront homes confirms Sanborn’s observation. “In years past there would be heavy negotiations,” Hinckley says, and buyers would get 20 percent off the asking price. Now, “those deep discounts are not happening.” Today, she says, negotiations are more often within five percent of the asking price. Continue Reading →
“Grants from money paid by electric utilities as part of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative…helped businesses reduce energy use by more than $5 million in the second year of the program, according to a new analysis…
For every dollar invested, the report said, there would be a return of $4.67 in energy savings over the lifetime of the projects: The lifetime savings from the $18.1 million spent from the fund are projected to be $84.5 million in energy costs based on current energy prices.”
As Brooks points out, RGGI has takes some heat at the statehouse,”because the cost of buying carbon-dioxide offsets is paid by utilities like PSNH, and thus helps raise electricity rates.” Supporters, however, argue that over the long run, cap-and-trade will cut down energy use, thus saving consumers money in the end.
Stimulus Funding Dries Up For Eco-Biz Incubator: A follow-up to our coverage of the Green Launching Pad. UNH began the start-up incubator and sustained it with federal stimulus money. Now, GLP’s looking for private support to keep up its mission of growing New Hampshire’s green economy.
Why NH’s Economy Is Especially Important For The 2012 Election: All nine swing states, including New Hampshire, are in different stages of economic recovery. But whether these states–including New Hampshire–will go Republican or Democratic this season hinges on a lot more than “It’s the economy, stupid.”
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