Granite State businesses were invited to gaze into a crystal ball and predict the area's economic future in the coming year
Every year, New Hampshire’s Business and Industry Association commissions a survey of the state’s firms. The idea is to get the pulse of how businesses think the next year will go. Do they think economic conditions, hiring, revenues, and capital spending will increase, decrease, or remain the same over the next year?
The answers to those questions–released today in the 2012 NH Business Outlook Survey–weren’t really that surprising. Here are the basics: Compared to predictions for 2011, respondents were slightly less optimistic for 2012…but still “cautiously optimistic.” For example, 14 percent of businesses thought hiring would improve, and 79 percent thought it would stay the same. Meanwhile, 43 percent thought their revenue would go up, and 26 percent thought they’d need to make more capital expenditures. Those numbers are no more than six points below predictions in the 2011 Outlook Survey. Continue Reading →
Bloomberg reporters followed the money...and found a massive, secret loan program.
Recently, Bloomberg released a stunning report about a massive, secret bank loan program run by the Fed. The story is the culmination of a two-year-old Freedom of Information request Bloomberg made to the central bank that was fought out in federal court. What the news organization won the right to see were thousands of pages of data about which banks got below-market-rate Fed loans, how much they got, and when.
Bloomberg reporters Bob Ivry, Bradley Keoun, and Phil Kuntz found:
“A fresh narrative of the financial crisis of 2007 to 2009 emerges from 29,000 pages of Fed documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and central bank records of more than 21,000 transactions. While Fed officials say that almost all of the loans were repaid and there have been no losses, details suggest taxpayers paid a price beyond dollars as the secret funding helped preserve a broken status quo and enabled the biggest banks to grow even bigger.” Continue Reading →
New Hampshire's "Buy Local" campaigns want shoppers to show up in plaid--and not try to get in at 5 am
Today, the “Buy Local” types–those signature Main Street merchants who sometimes struggle to strike a balance between carrying unique, if occasionally under-sold items, and high-demand products that big box stores can push for lower prices–are finally embracing Black Friday. Sort of. More accurately, they’re embracing the date itself as a marketing opportunity for holiday shoppers who would rather skip scouring crowded big box stores for deeply-discounted goods.
They’re calling it “Plaid Friday.” And it’s taking place throughout New Hampshire. Continue Reading →
This Thanksgiving, we're thankful for you (and your clicks!)
Happy Thanksgiving! It’s a short week at StateImpact as well, but we’ve still got some content ready to roll out for Black Friday (so check back when you wake up for the second time tomorrow morning).
Today, we’re taking it a bit easy.
But if you’d like a spot of business and economic news between helpings of turkey, or before you rustle up the leftover turkey in the fridge for late-night sandwiches, we’ve got what you’re looking for. Here’s your short holiday week’s edition of Essential StateImpact, our roundup of the stories that the most people were worth checking out:
Mapping Who’s Coming To–And Leaving–New Hampshire: Forbes used IRS data to create a cool map showing where people from every county in the United States moved. Where is Merrimack County gaining people from? Where is Coos County losing residents to? The map reveals all. Continue Reading →
Jon Huntsman took a brief respite from campaigning in New Hampshire to go on SNL
In all likelihood, most of you aren’t visiting StateImpact for our primary coverage. Yes, we completely agree that the Republican primary is a Very Big Deal. But most people don’t go to business news sites to get nitty-gritty political coverage, either. So we try to keep political stories strictly focused on New Hampshire’s business and economic environment. They have to be specific to the situation here. Every time a politician talks about business in New Hampshire, we don’t automatically post it.
But today is the day before Thanksgiving.
If you haven’t already taken the day off, we wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to check out from the daily grind for a couple of minutes. In fact, we’ll aid and abet that one. Continue Reading →
On the defense side, reporter Anna Mulrine of of The Christian Science Monitor outlines the current situation this way:
“The failure of the super committee to reach a deficit deal will now trigger what Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has described as a ‘doomsday’ scenario.
Namely, this entails $600 billion in mandatory budget cuts during the next decade – in addition to $450 billion in cuts that the Pentagon had already agreed to. Continue Reading →
Compared to the rest of the nation's counties, you could say New England has more challengers than contenders. Find out who's racking up the most wins--and losses--after the jump
Yesterday, we linked to a nifty map generated by Jon Bruner of Forbes. (We still recommend you check it out.) Using IRS data, he was able to trace where people in every county in the country were moving to–and from–since 2005.
Since New England’s been experiencing a shortage of young, working-age people–and their kids–for some time now, we thought this research would be of particular interest to our StateImpact readers. At the risk of oversimplifying the issue, the region’s problem basically boils down to this: If we can’t get more young people to move to New England and start having kids, we’re going to have a hard time replenishing our workforce–and our tax base–farther down the line.
So, as promised yesterday, here’s a county-by-county analysis of the data.* For brevity’s sake, we’ll be looking at the Lakes Region, White Mountains, North Country, and most of Dartmouth-Sunapee today. Later on, we’ll have a look at the rest of Dartmouth-Sunapee, the Merrimack Valley, Seacoast, and Monadnock Region.
For fun’s sake, we’re looking at this in terms of wins-and-losses.
Over-simplified? Maybe.
More fun than a mid-autumn’s stroll through migration figures? You betcha. Continue Reading →
For a small state, New Hampshire's got a lot of wide, open spaces, be they near lakes, mountains, or fields. And according to one report, that's very, very good for the second home economy.
If you tuned-in to NHPR’s “The Exchange” yesterday morning, you might have heard economist Russ Thibeault talking about an interesting (and these days, somewhat obscure) report. We’ll get to that in a minute. But first, a bit of background.
Yesterday’s program was based on StateImpact’s reporting, which focused on the economic impact of New Hampshire’s vacation homes. And as we’ve noted in previous coverage, that’s a nebulous number to track down. For one thing, the Division of Travel and Tourism doesn’t keep track of second homeowners. Meanwhile, although you can get a decent count of seasonal homes based on Census data, it’s harder to tell how many of those homes have been converted to full-time residences, and vice-versa. And, as noted at last week’s New England Economic Forecast conference, it’s hard to pin-down solid retail data, because New Hampshire doesn’t have a sales tax. New Hampshire businesses aren’t reporting their sales in the same, detailed way that retailers are in most other states. So it’s tough to look at towns with high concentrations of vacation homes and drill down to how much money those homeowners are pumping into the local economy. Continue Reading →
Here's an example of the map created for Forbes. You can click on each county in New Hampshire and see its migration patterns
As you’re probably well aware by now, StateImpact really, really likes maps, charts, and other cool ways of visualizing the numbers soup we lovingly refer to as “raw data.” Oftentimes, we like to generate our own stuff. But every now and then, someone creates an interactive data tool so cool, we just have to share it–and offer our own little bit of analysis.
Scenic waterfronts and other "lifestyle" attributes are some of the drivers of New Hampshire's second home economy
Last summer, StateImpact took a closer look at the economic effects of the Granite State’s 64,000 vacation homes. Our coverage caught the attention of NHPR‘s Laura Knoy and the crew of her daily call-in show, “The Exchange.”
This morning, reporter Amanda Loder joined Laura and economist Russ Thibeault on “The Exchange” to talk about the economic, political, cultural and demographic implications of this niche real estate market.
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