Since we launched last summer, StateImpact's picked up some serious steam. Here are our 10 posts that drew the most eyes in 2011
It’s hard for us to believe, but StateImpact New Hampshire launched just five short months ago. During that time, we’ve worked to bring you data-driven reports and analysis focused on how business and the economy in New Hampshire work. Our goal is to bring you original journalism, to dig deeper into the big stories of the day, and to bring you the stories you didn’t even know were there. And, we’ve tried to do it in as interesting and as accessible a way as possible.
We’re going to do more of the same in the New Year.
But, as we move toward wrapping-up 2011, we just couldn’t resist a little retrospective–This Year’s Essential Stateimpact:
The States With The Best And Worst Wage Laws For Home Health Workers: By far our most popular post this year was a map we generated based on data from the White House on which states do–and don’t–offer home health workers overtime and minimum wage under the law. This map provides a quick and easy way to find out how individual states–and regions–compare.
How Junk Mail Is Helping To Prop Up The Postal Service: Our quest to find out how much companies like Fingerhut really pay to send us catalogs we never asked for led us deep into the arcana of postal rates. There are numbers (this is a StateImpact piece, after all!), but it’s also one of our lighter-toned stories…an economic news “dessert piece,” so to speak. Continue Reading →
Here's our roundup of five big trends that shaped NH's economy in 2011
With Christmas and Hanukkah wrapped-up, we’ve officially reached the pre-New Year’s lull. This brief respite from the regularly scheduled holiday cheer is when many people take the opportunity to consider their accomplishments and failures over the past year, and resolve to do better in the future. Other people just go to work for a few days and get really, really bored at their desks as they countdown to their next party.
Either way, it’s a bit of a restless period, isn’t it?
So here at StateImpact, we’ve decided to combat this inter-holiday malaise with a list. We’ve been watching a lot of economic forecast presentations lately, and reading a lot of white papers. So we took that information, along with some of our previous coverage, tossed it into the metaphorical pot, and boiled it down into a quick list of five essential trends that shaped the Granite State’s economy over the past year. While it’s certainly not exhaustive, it provides some food for thought looking toward 2012. Continue Reading →
The New Hampshire Ski Industry Reports Lower Revenues
New Hampshire ski area operators are trying to keep up a hopeful message about this year’s season, but there is a lot less snow this year than last.
Ski areas are able to make snow, but as the Union Leader reports, Cannon Mountain had 70 trails open this time last year. This year, the mountain has only 17 trails open. Other resorts also have a diminished list of open trails.
“From a business standpoint, the next few days will be crucial days,” said Karl Stone, spokesman for Ski NH, the statewide organization representing most ski areas in the state.
He said this week [and] the Martin Luther King-Civil Rights long weekend in January and February vacation, represent 30 percent of annual business for ski areas.
A New Hampshire developer plans to renovate two mostly-abandoned apartment buildings in Franklin and turn them into affordable housing for working class families. The company, New England Family Housing, plans to buy the 30-unit building for $615,000.
Kevin Lacasse, who owns the company, told the Concord Monitor that the he buildings, which were constructed in the 1970s, have not had any major improvements for several decades.
“It’s been severely run down and kind of deteriorating,” he said of the buildings, full of avocado green countertops and blue shag rugs.
But the problems are more than cosmetic: faulty electrical outlets, inadequate smoke and carbon monoxide detection, mold, broken doors, a failing roof and a crumbling parking lot. Material from unoccupied units has been ripped out and used to maintain occupied ones, and water damage has forced gutting some walls down to the studs, Lacasse said.
“The cost to rehabilitate the buildings could be as high as $650,000. That, plus the cost to buy, would exceed the property’s value, Lacasse said.”
“It’s just continued to decline and . . . (has become) a last-resort place to live,” Lacasse said. Only eight of the 30 units – 15 per building – are occupied, he said, and crime has filled the vacuum.”
Lacasse is applying for a $500,000 federal block grant to help pay for the renovation. Franklin Police told the Monitor that the blighted buildings have been an active area for drug dealing and other crime. Once the buildings are completed, they are to remain affordable for 20 years.
Recreation--both summer and winter--is a huge driver of NH's second home market
Working on a site that deals with business and the economy, we look at a lot of reports. Economic reports, financial reports, government analyses…it goes on and on. So when we heard about the importance of second homes to New Hampshire’s economy, our first instinct was to reach for a report.
We came up empty-handed.
And when that happened, we decided to try to get our arms around how important vacation homes really are to the state’s economy, what this market looks like during The Great Recession, and what it could mean for the Granite State’s future.
This topic was a rich one for us, spawning a series of posts, interactive maps, and even a show on NHPR’s call-in show, “The Exchange.”
We ran with these posts shortly following the launch of StateImpact. So if you missed the coverage (and the cool maps), we’ve got you covered! Continue Reading →
Meanwhile, the Project On Student Debt recently reported that New Hampshire state school students who graduated in 2010 carry the highest average debt load in the country.
So StateImpact decided to parse the data a different way, looking at the average debt load for each of the state’s public and private schools, and situating those figures in the context of New England as a whole. We also delved into the particularly high student debt rate at the University of New Hampshire, and looked into why Dartmouth College actually boasts the lowest average debt in the state.
These posts have proved to be among our most popular features.
So if you missed an installment, or would like to check out the whole series at once, you’re in luck! Continue Reading →
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!
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.
As NHPR’s Dan Gorenstein reports, despite the fact that New Hampshire’s economy is stronger than most of the country’s and has an unemployment rate well below the national average, Republican voters are still worried about their future. As New Hampshire economist Ross Gittell puts it: “It’s all relative.”
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: NH Green Jobs Growth Picture Unclear.
Here’s the lead:
“As the economy continues to limp along toward recovery, “green jobs” has become a buzz phrase, often tossed out as a panacea for our economic ails. But compared to the rest of the nation, New Hamphire’s share of this sector doesn’t exactly stand out. Continue Reading →
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