Amanda Loder was StateImpactâs 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.
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Christmas has come late to StateImpact! Like many of you, this is the day our company has chosen to designate as our official Christmas holiday. So we won’t be turning out our usual link roundups this morning in favor of some late December R&R. But never fear! There will be parcels of economic news popping up to pass around today.
And, until we return tomorrow, we wish you a Happy Boxing Day!
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StateImpact found that business poaching from Massachusetts is about more than just tax policy
When New Hampshire politicians and business-types talk about “economic development,” they often mean touting the so-called “New Hampshire Advantage.” Among other things, that’s overall low–or in many cases, no–taxes, an educated workforce, and that amorphous “quality of life” distinction.
But “economic development” in the Granite State also means using the much-vaunted New Hampshire Advantage as a tool for poaching businesses from Massachusetts.
As we’ve noted previously, one of the hazards of soft-launching a business news blog is that some of our earlier coverage just didn’t get the audience that our later pieces have snagged.
So as we look to the New Year, we’d like to re-gift this coverage to you. We’re scouring our archives for the very best that StateImpact’s had to offer since we went online this past summer.
And today’s news parcel is actually a matching set: Continue Reading
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Energy is just one facet of the green economy
Late last July, StateImpact New Hampshire quietly launched our new website. Our mission –handed down from NHPR and NPR, its partner in the new StateImpact project–is to examine business and the economy in the Granite State, and how government policy affects both.
And while soft launches give websites the chance to find their feet and slowly build up a nice, steady audience…some of the really good stuff you turn out early on just doesn’t get seen.
So as we wrap up 2011, we’ve decided to bring some of our best–and most relevant–StateImpact stories up to the forefront.
And we start with our very first piece of in-depth coverage:Â NH Green Jobs Growth Picture Unclear.
Here’s the lead:
“As the economy continues to limp along toward recovery, âgreen jobsâ has become a buzz phrase, often tossed out as a panacea for our economic ails. But compared to the rest of the nation, New Hamphireâs share of this sector doesnât exactly stand out. Continue Reading
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Find out more on which NH counties are challengers--and which are contenders--after the jump
One of our most popular drop-in series at StateImpact has been our county-by-county glimpses at migration rates. Our work is based on a map generated by Jon Bruner of Forbes. (We still recommend you check it out.) Using IRS data, Bruner traced where people in every county in the country were moving toâand fromâbetween 2005 and 2009.
Although New Hampshire’s economy is doing very well now, given the circumstances, there are questions about whether the state will be on sound footing in the coming decades. New England in general is experiencing a shortage of young people. And the young people we have aren’t having a lot of kids. In the past, New Hampshire’s been able to depend, to some extent, on people moving in from elsewhere. But as we’ve seen in previous posts, that in-migration is concentrated in certain pockets throughout the state. And while Bruner’s map doesn’t list migration patterns by age, we can fill in some gaps in key places based on what we know from New Hampshire economist- and demographer-types.
We’ve already looked at the North Country, White Mountains, Dartmouth-Sunapee, Monadnock Region, and Lakes Region. (You can read those posts here and here.)
Now, it’s on to Strafford County and the Seacoast! Continue Reading
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You could say personal income growth in Q3 was less about the Benjamins than about the Jacksons...
Lately, the US Bureau of Economic Analysis has been crunching numbers looking at so called “personal income” growth. That figure includes all pre-tax income: wages, salaries, dividends, annuities, Social Security checks…everything.
And for the third quarter of 2011, the growth was rather modest. In its media release, the Bureau of Economic Analysis noted:
“State personal income growth slowed to 0.1 percent, on average, in the third quarter of 2011. Growth rates ranged from -0.4 percent in West Virginia to 0.6 percent in Washington State. Personal income fell or was unchanged in twenty states and grew 0.2 percent in the other thirty.” Continue Reading
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P2P file sharing--whether illegally downloading music and movies or offering alternative lending--is a controversy magnet
First of all, if you haven’t checked-in with NHPR’s Word of Mouth…you need to. StateImpact listens in frequently. And it just so happens that we found a cool interview host Virginia Prescott did with reporter MacGregor Campbell about the resurrection of peer-to-peer lending in lieu of banks. As the segment intro explains:
“Back in the mid-2000’s, peer to peer lending web sites like Prosper and Lending Club bet that ordinary people could take the place of banks. The business model was both daring and consistent with the hyper-connected internet culture. The idea was that people who needed loans could connect with investors willing to bet on getting paid back with a little interest. Prosperâs faith in crowd-sourcing replacing traditional risk-assessment tools used by banks turned out to be a mistake. Within two years, the SEC shut it down for not holding insurance to repay jilted lendersâŠit turns out that up to twenty percent of the borrowing crowd defaulted on their loans. Todayâs tighter loan policies have paved the way for a new wave of P2P banks to again experiment with connecting people through lending.” Continue Reading
Images_of_Money / Flickr
It's time for our weekly roundup of the StateImpact posts you thought--pound for pound--were the most intriguing.
It’s late on a Friday afternoon…which means it’s time for us to pass along the StateImpact posts that drew the most clicks. So if your computer caught fire, your iPhone broke, or life otherwise happened and you missed one of our “talker” pieces…you’re in luck!
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Colonial Theatre project in downtown Laconia snagged the biggest grant
Twenty-three conservation and historic preservation projects will be sharing just north of $1 million in state grants courtesy of New Hampshire’s Land and Community Heritage Investment Program (LCHIP). Fourteen historic structures and more than 2,800 acres of land ultimately qualified for funding.
Grant awards ranged from $150,000 toward the $5 million project to buy and restore the Colonial Theatre in Laconia to $4,000 to renovate the Stack Room in the Silsby Library in Acworth. In a media release, the LCHIP Board of Directors estimated:
“These projects will support more than 120 jobs and contribute over $3.7 million to the employment economy of the state…
The [most recent round of] LCHIP grants of $1,158,308 have attracted about $13.5 million in total project value.” Continue Reading
President Obama is pushing for a change to federal labor rules covering payment and overtime for home health workers. We've cobbled together White House data on which states do--and don't--offer minimum wage and overtime for home health workers. Continue reading
Justin R. / Flickr
Pay raises for NH workers between 2009-2010 were by and large modest--at best.
Using data on salaries and wages recently released by the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis, Kathleen Callahan of the New Hampshire Business Review breaks down the payday picture for Granite Staters.
And while it’s not dismal, it’s also not the best.
“Total employment compensation in New Hampshire increased by 1.8 percent in 2010, but it didn’t increase in all of the state’s 10 counties, according to the U.S. Commerce Department. Continue Reading
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