Garry Rayno of InDepthNH.org reports that New Hampshire ended the fiscal year with more than $300 million of surplus revenues on a cash basis. The revenue report will be adjusted later in the month to account for money collected in fiscal year 2021 that is intended for the current fiscal year, 2022. (The state’s fiscal year runs from July 1 to the following June 30 and is numbered for the calendar year in which it ends.)
The revenue surplus is another indication that most New Hampshire businesses did well during the pandemic, but the state also reported that 131,000 people lost their livelihoods. “This job loss was larger than seen in any recession over the past 50 years,” the Department of Administrative Services reports in its “Reviving New Hampshire’s Workforce: 2021 Economic Analysis Report.”
The current unemployment rate is about the same as it was before the pandemic, but the number of people in the workforce is not. According to the report, the proportion of the population in the workforce now is lower than it was during the Great Recession. Some people chose to retire, others left to care for children or other family members, and others suffered burnout or want to avoid the risk of infection. Some are still on unemployment while waiting for businesses that had accepted Paycheck Protection Program loans intended to preserve jobs to hire them back after furloughing them during the pandemic.
Failing to recognize the many reasons that people have not found jobs, some continue to blame the jobless for not securing work. The Bristol NH Town Crier Facebook page, which lists its rules as: 1. Be Kind and Courteous; 2. No Hate Speech or Bullying. 3. Rules are simple,” carried a post by Randal Kelley: “I’m so old I can remember when people treated being on unemployment as an embarrassing secret, not a life goal.”
Not all businesses did well during the pandemic. Restaurants, lodging facilities, and entertainment venues were forced to close. U.S. Senator Maggie Hassan, promoting the American Rescue Plan, visited the Bank of New Hampshire Pavilion in Gilford and Twin Barns Brewing Company in Meredith to emphasize how the government can help them recover from the pandemic and safely keep their doors open. The state’s new biennial operating budget reduces the rates for the business profits and the business enterprise taxes and the rooms and meals tax, and begins phasing out the interest and dividends tax.
One of the reasons New Hampshire and Vermont recovered so quickly from the economic upheaval was the fact that the Twin States have many second homes where people from urban areas were able to retreat. The ability to work remotely enabled them to do that, spurring local economic activity and swelling school enrollment in some districts. The hot home market that followed multiplied those effects.
The attractions of living and working in New Hampshire have put residents in a better position than many other areas, but work remains to be done.
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