Amanda Loder was StateImpact’s multimedia reporter until the project merged with the New Hampshire Public Radio site in July 2013. She now serves as a reporter and Weekend Edition Host for NHPR. You can continue to follow her work at @AmandaLoderNHPR, at nhpr.org, and on New Hampshire Public Radio.
We've rounded-up the top five posts this week that caught your eye and captured your clicks
In a lot of ways, Friday afternoon is the perfect time for catching-up. It’s too early to clock out, but too late to start a big new project. And at StateImpact, we tend to think it’s also a great time to catch you up on New Hampshire’s business and economy news. Here’s your weekly roundup of the top five StateImact posts you might’ve missed:
Seven Takeaways From The Carsey Institute’s Report On Raising Wages For Home Care Workers: This post was by far the most popular this week. In it, we follow up on a previous post showing which states do and don’t offer minimum wage and overtime to home care workers (#3). The Obama Administration is now pushing to include these workers under federal wage and overtime laws. It’s proved to be a controversial move. A researcher at the Carsey Institute looked at the implications of such a change, and we break down her report. Continue Reading →
While more counties have seen child poverty rise over the past 30 years, New Hampshire has stayed relatively steady.
We’re all about cool maps at StateImpact, and we just couldn’t resist sharing this one on the changing face of child and senior poverty over the past 30 years. Demographer Kenneth Johnson at the Carsey Institute recently crunched some 2010 Census data, and working with a team at USA Today, came up with a cool county-by-county visualization. (We can’t embed the map here, because it’s proprietary, but we promise you, it’s well worth the visit.) By dragging a bar across the map, you can see which areas had child and/or senior poverty rates above 20 percent in 1980 and 2010.
The map clearly illustrates three stories about youth and elder poverty over the past 30 years:
The number of counties with senior poverty rates over 20 percent has gone down significantly.
The number of counties with child poverty rates over 20 percent has gone up significantly.
New Hampshire’s socio-economic landscape has remained relatively consistent over the past three decades, at least in terms of the oldest and youngest people. No county in the 1980 or 2010 Census registered poverty rates among the young or old over 20 percent.
“Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe has said the agency needs to reduce $20 billion in annual costs by 2015. Moving processing away from the 223 centers would reduce operating costs by $2.6 billion annually, according to the Postal Service’s website. Continue Reading →
Among the GOP field, one report finds only Ron Paul's tax plan wouldn't increase national debt
As we publish, US Budget Watch (part of the bipartisan group Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget) just announced release of a report analyzing the tax plans of the GOP presidential candidates. (We’ll link to it when it becomes available.)
According to their research, only Ron Paul’s tax plan won’t dramatically increase the national debt.
Reporter Lila Shapiro says talk of a "skills gap" in manufacturing is overblown
First of all, if you haven’t read Lila Shapiro’s article for the Huffington Post about the “skills mismatch” (we’ve been calling it the “skills gap”) in manufacturing, you need to. Seriously. It’s well worth the read. If you’d like the condensed version, however, we’re happy to provide highlights.
For the past couple of weeks, we’ve been digging into the issue of the skills gap in New Hampshire, and the idea that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of factory jobs open, if only there were qualified people to fill them.
Community College Chancellor Ross Gittell breaks delves into the skills gap issue
As the national economy continues to trudge toward recovery, the Obama Administration has been pushing advanced manufacturing as a key driver for jobs growth. So over the past couple of weeks, we’ve been looking at various aspects of manufacturing in New Hampshire. While the sector historically struggled in the transition from mill work to high-tech fabrication, today, manufacturing is thriving in the Granite State.
But to continue on a sustainable path, the sector faces one daunting challenge: The so-called “skills gap.”
In many of the state’s factories, the bulk of advanced machining and other skilled work is done by Baby Boomers, who are rapidly moving toward retirement age. And community colleges aren’t turning out enough graduates with the skills to replace them.
Recently, we sat down with new Community College System Chancellor–and economist–Ross Gittell to discuss the depth of this problem, and how he hopes the state’s trade schools can solve it. Continue Reading →
In his report, Clifford uses mainly New England examples to explain why some state foreclosure mediation programs work, why some don’t, and how states can fix their systems and prevent more foreclosures. Mediation, by the way, is when a neutral third-party helps negotiate an agreement between a lender and a borrower to prevent foreclosure. (And just FYI, Massachusetts is the only state in New England that doesn’t have some sort of state or city-headed mediation program). Continue Reading →
As usual on holidays, we won’t be posting our morning link roundup. But no worries! We’ve rustled up some cool content for the day. So do check back…and Happy Presidents’ Day!
We break down the posts that stood out the most this week.
Happy Friday, StateImpact readers! As usual at this time on a Friday afternoon, we’d like to take a moment to call up our most popular posts, just in case you missed them.
So with that in mind, we now present This Week’s Essential StateImpact!
A Look Inside An Advanced NH Factory: Our first foray into photographic story-telling was a big hit! For this post, we take you on a brief tour of Elbit Systems of America in Merrimack, and explain its importance to the resurgence of New Hampshire’s manufacturing economy. Continue Reading →
The reasons home care workers aren't guaranteed minimum wage and overtime go back decades..
Recently, the Obama Administration announced plans to change Labor Department rules so that home care workers–personal care aides and home health aides–are guaranteed federal minimum wage and overtime pay. Right now, states are allowed to decide if they want to include this class of worker under their own minimum wage and overtime laws. Many have opted not to. Since the rules change announcement, we’ve mapped which states offer these protections to home care workers, and which don’t. Most recently, we broke down a study looking at the economic benefits and drawbacks of requiring higher pay for many of these workers.
This issue has led to a key question among some of our readers: Why aren’t home care workers guaranteed minimum wage and overtime when their colleagues in hospitals and nursing homes are?
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