Ok, so I had another rant which I sent to the Ledger as a letter to the editor. And I always want to share this stuff with you all.
In December 2009, when the national unemployment rate was 9.7%, NH’s rate peaked at 6.7%.
In June of 2010, a year ago, the NH rate of unemployment was 6.0%.
In December 2010, it was 5.6%.
Now, as of June 2011, our unemployment rate is 4.8%.
Just to be clear, at the height of this great recession, NH was in much better shape that the rest of the US, and our unemployment rate has been dropping steadily ever since. This was in the middle of four years of Democratic majorities in the NH state legislature, under Governor Lynch.
When the recession hit in 2009, NH put into practice strategies that effectively used the federal stimulus funds coming into the state, leveraging those dollars to keep many public employees, teachers, firefighters, police on the job, and moving forward on shovel ready projects. The last act of the Democratic legislature a year ago was to cut $300 million from the budget.
So be clear about who gets credit for our current good economic climate.
The budget just passed, drastically cutting state spending, only goes into effect on July 1.
Those cuts will mean NH job losses:
- Hundreds of millions of dollars lost to hospitals will mean layoffs in the health care sector.
- Forty-five percent cut in state aid to higher education will mean cuts to college and university personnel. Potential students who cannot afford the higher tuition will be seeking work instead.
- Direct cuts in the number of state employees and indirect cuts to public schools and local municipalities will mean many public employees will now be looking for jobs.
Perhaps a number of these newly unemployed will find jobs in our private sector.
Or our unemployment rate may change direction and start going up.
