Memorial Day weekend is the unofficial start to summer — for New Hampshire’s Division of Travel and Tourism Development, at least. The DTTD just launched a television marketing campaign in Boston and New York featuring happy kids running in the woods and playing on the beach. This year, the tourism office predicts that visitors will spend $86 million in New Hampshire this weekend — an increase of five percent from last year.
Of course, the Director of the Institute for New Hampshire Studies at Plymouth state, Mark Okrant, made sure I understood that, really, Memorial Day is a spring holiday. So while the tourism industry’s performance this weekend will be a good indicator of how people are feeling about gas prices and the economy in general, it doesn’t really predict tourists’ behavior in the upcoming months.
Photographer Rick Libbey, who goes by “the moose man,” will be setting up shop in Meredith, NH this weekend at the 21st annual Memorial Day Weekend Craft Festival, where he has spent Memorial Day weekend for the last 5 years. Rick is banking on the same customers that the DTTD is targeting with their television ads in Boston and NYC. “I’m seeing that they’re spending,” Rick told me. After the recession hit, Rick restructured his business to keep prices down. He says that helped his business thrive despite the downturn. “When people see a nice piece of art at an aggressive bargain price, they’re gonna get it.”
His mantra is “think smart, play smart, and by all means have a smile on your face.”
Our weekly roundup of this week's most eye-popping posts
Before you dash away from your desk for Memorial Day weekend, here’s a bit of Friday afternoon refreshment: Your weekly roundup of StateImpact’s Top 5 posts!
Why NH Factories Are Struggling To Fill Jobs: By one estimate, there are 600,000 open factory jobs nationwide for skilled workers–and not enough qualified people to fill them. We look into the “skills gap” situation in New Hampshire, how the Community College System and federal dollars come into play, and why some critics say these kinds of job training programs are a waste of money.
How Much Is N.H. Paying For The Freedom To Take Risks?: The Granite State’s well known for for its laid-back stance on safety legislation. Whether motorists choose to wear seat belts or bikers strap on helmets is their prerogative. But according to a recent report, fatal accidents and injuries carry hidden costs beyond lost lives.
Q&A: Why There’s More To The “Skills Gap” Than A Worker Shortage: The companion piece to “Why NH Factories Are Struggling To Fill Jobs.” We put what’s happening with New Hampshire’s skills gap into national perspective. Using expert voices, we delve into why large manufacturers have rising expectations for workers and why it’s hard to tell if community college-based training programs actually work.
“Wealthy people don’t just have better toys; they have better nutrition and better medical care, more free time and more meaningful labor—more of just about every ingredient in the recipe for a happy life. And yet, they aren’t that much happier than those who have less. If money can buy happiness, then why doesn’t it?” Ask the authors of a 2011 research dialogue in the Journal Of Consumer Psychology.
Their answer? Because we’re spending our money all wrong.
The three authors — leading researchers on money and happiness — put together a list of takeaways from recent studies, condensed below by Rozanne Larsen of Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center.
Eight Ways To Spend Your Money And Get Happy Doing It: Continue Reading →
On Tuesday I described findings in a new report from the Trust For America’s Health, which ranked New Hampshire as having very few injury-prevention laws. You can see on TFAH’s nifty map below that N.H. stands out in red — among its more legislation-heavy neighbors — with only four injury-prevention policies.
As of yesterday, however, that may no longer be the case. Not only did the N.H. Senate approve the prescription drug tracking bill I mentioned at the end of the last post, but the Senate also approved a bill requiring that all school boards develop guidelines for preventing and responding to head injuries among student athletes.
According to the new bill, a student who shows symptoms of a concussion or whom a coach, trainer or other suspects has sustained a concussion must refrain from participating until he or she has permission from a health care provider.
If TFAH’s report had come out today, perhaps N.H. would be shaded brown, along with its neighbors.
This map was reproduced from the Trust For American Health website. View the whole report and interactive map here.
According to a report released today by the Trust for America’s Health, 659 Granite Staters died from injuries between 2007 and 2009 — injuries such as concussions, motor vehicle accidents, and unintentional prescription drug overdoses. These injuries are not only a cause of grief for families and communities; they cost state and federal government, insurers, employers and families a total of $6.1 million in medical care and $625 million in lost productivity each year.
Of all 50 states, only nine had fewer injury-prevention laws than N.H. The last time a seatbelt bill was voted down in New Hampshire, Republic State Sen. Robert E. Clegg Jr told the New York Times: “The citizens of New Hampshire don’t like to be told by anyone else what to do … [rejecting this bill] preserves New Hampshire’s way of not succumbing to the bribes of the federal government and New Hampshire’s belief that every adult can make his or her own choices in life.” Other laws N.H. has not passed include required motorcycle and bicycle helmets; drunk-driving ignition interlocks for convicted drunk drivers; and booster seats that meet AAP standards for children. Continue Reading →
In the past, New Hampshire attracted more new residents, which bolstered the state's economy
The Granite State’s economy depends heavily on well-educated and highly-skilled workers. Historically, a lot of that labor pool has been replenished by out-of-staters. Given recent concerns about the ebbing waves of new Granite Staters, we thought it was time to repost a series of posts we did on the subject of migration, based on IRS data (and a cool interactive map from Forbes).
Your trusty StateImpact team has (temporarily) left the building. So our Latest Links feature is on hiatus until Thursday. But no worries! Our cyber-minions are holding down the fort, and will offer up choice nuggets of New Hampshire economic news until we get back!
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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 →
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