Economic Conditions in New Hampshire

The State of New Hampshire Economic and Labor Market Information Bureau does a very nice job with their monthly newsletter about economic conditions in the state of New Hampshire.

I signed up for these newsletters way back when I was elected to the Litchfield Budget Committee. I used them to give me the general flavor of the state economy, so I could judge how people might be otherwise impacted by taxes or other payments.

Once again...the year over year numbers are interesting. Of course, it sounds like a broken record, but Manufacturing is WAY off from a year ago. Something like 1600 jobs below. Over all though, the state employment levels rose by 1.5%, or by 8,800 jobs statewide.

Most of the job increases came from services jobs, as well as some forms of retail. The surprise to me was the increase in construction...especially given the large decrease in housing starts.

Of the 18 industries listed, there were 14 that had positive year over year growth. The remaining 4 industries had a fact down year in their job market.

NH also continued to have to lowest unemployment rate in the northeast. (of course, we also have perhaps the lowest unemployment benefits, so there may be a corrolation there!) The NH rate of unemployment is 3.5% as compared with 4.9% and 4.7% for Massachusetts and the enture USA respectively.