"What turns out to make a big difference as we try to recruit young, talented engineers from around the country is the great quality of life around here," said Joseph Morone, President and CEO of Albany International.
We hear about the “New Hampshire Advantage” all the time. Our low personal taxes and great quality of life make headlines every time a company contemplates relocating to the Granite State.
But what happens after a company has been here for a while? Are company leaders still happy with their choice?
For leadership at Rochester, NH-based Albany International, the answer is an unequivocal “yes.”
Albany International has been a poster child of sorts for New Hampshire’s brand of economic success. In 2010, it relocated its corporate headquarters from Albany, NY, to Rochester with plans to build a new manufacturing plant and hire hundreds of workers. Even Vice President Joseph Biden, who visited the company earlier this year, hailed it as a prime example of public-private partnerships. Continue Reading →
Absolut Monopoly: Is it worth privatizing hard liquor sales in New Hampshire?
A modified bill that would allow businesses to sell hard liquor has cleared committee and is ready for debate by the full House. As the Concord Monitor‘s Matt Spolar reports, HB 1251 began as a standard-issue Legalize Private Liquor Sales initiative–which promptly deadlocked the Commerce committee. So rather than kill the bill, the committee rewrote it to establish “a study committee to research the issue.”
So why does it matter if a bill to study the possibility of allowing grocery stores to sell vodka made it out of committee? The short answer is, once the bill hits the floor, it’s open to amendments. And as Spolar explains, the right amendment could create bring the watered-down bill closer to its original form: Continue Reading →
“A recent study by the American Enterprise Institute found that for every 100 educated immigrants working in Science, Technology, Engineering or Math, 86 additional jobs are generated.
The latest Census data indicate that New Hampshire might be missing out on some of those jobs. In New Hampshire there are 42 percent more educated foreigners than nationally. Immigrants in New Hampshire have even higher rates of education than native-born residents, and the local unemployment for this population sits at around 8 percent, compared to 5.5 percent nation-wide.”
Pittman's Freight Room from Laconia is bringing high quality jazz musicians to the Lakes Region.
While we at StateImpact like to talk about trends and broad-brush movements in business and economics, occasionally it’s helpful to zoom-in and look at individual cases of business success.
For example, this weekend Adam Draphco of the Laconia Daily Sun profiled Pitman’s Freight Room, which is, of all things, a jazz listening-room in the Lakes Region. The owner, Jonathan Lorentz, has been hosting live jazz performances there once a week all summer. The building was being used as an antique shop until 2009, when it was renovated as a function hall.
For those of us who grew up in the Lakes Region, a serious jazz venue seems like a hard sell, especially one that doesn’t feature a bar. But the Freight Room doesn’t isn’t a typical music venue. It’s low-key and listening centric. Continue Reading →
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 →
The House Health and Human Services Committee has sent an amended bill on to the full House which would allow not just cancer specialty hospitals (like Cancer Treatment Centers of America) but all specialty hospitals to bypass the Certificate of Need process. Meanwhile, all other hospitals in the state would still have to go in front of the CON board to gain approval for new or expanded services.
Concord Republican Rep. Lynn Blakenbeker voted in favor of the bill.
“We as a state should be encouraging businesses all kinds to come into the state especially when it comes to specialty healthcare treatment we should be offering all options,” she says. 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.
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