Today the Bureau of Labor and Statistics released the September Jobs Report, which saw the unemployment rate drop to 7.8%. Like all of our previous Monthly Jobs Report analyses, we take a closer look at the data beyond the unemployment rate. Below are this month’s takeaways: 1.      All of the metrics show modest improvement Looking […]

Charlie Arlinghaus October 3, 2012 As originally published in the New Hampshire Union Leader Two weeks ago, the state board of education denied every charter school application before them citing a financial problem that didn’t exist. Further their action circumvented legislation and calls into question whether they should be permitted to continue in their role […]

The New Hampshire Retirement System announced Friday that the pension fund posted a 0.9% gain for Fiscal Year 2012. Preliminary estimates had projected a 0.7% gain, but upon the final calculation for the fund’s real estate and alternative assets, the rate of return was revised upward. In the quarterly investment highlights, the system also published […]

Charlie Arlinghaus September 26, 2012 As originally published in the New Hampshire Union Leader Budgets are a discipline we force upon politicians who have trouble controlling themselves. Left to themselves, politicians will promise you the moon without telling you about the new moon tax they have to impose to pay for it. On Earth, the […]

According to preliminary data from the Bureau of Labor Statics, New Hampshire’s unemployment rate increased from 5.4% to 5.7% for the month of August. As with the national unemployment rate released by the Bureau, the unemployment rate is only one of many data points published in the monthly jobs report. The data not commonly discussed […]

Charlie Arlinghaus September 19, 2012 As originally published in the New Hampshire Union Leader In a few weeks, Maine will finish a $44 million project to extend a money-losing commuter train and lose even more money. Fortunately, retiring Sen. Olympia Snowe got them money in the federal budget to fund their profligacy. Some politicians in […]

According  to the foreclosure tracking firm RealtyTrac, New Hampshire saw 688 foreclosure filings for the month of August, which was slightly higher than previous month. For August, one out of every 894 residential dwellings in the state received a notice of either bank repossession or foreclosure auction, better than the national average of one in […]

Charlie Arlinghaus September 12, 2012 As originally published in the New Hampshire Union Leader What you think you know is often wrong. We are bombarded in election season with facts that aren’t facts and conclusions that are so convenient to our worldview that checking them against the facts would be inconvenient. More important to most […]

Today the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its August jobs report, which showed that the unemployment rate dropped from 8.3% to 8.1%, and payroll grew by 96,000. Economists had predicted somewhere between 120,000 and 140,000 jobs, with a growth of 150,000 jobs a month needed just to keep up with natural population growth. However, despite […]

Joshua Elliott-Traficante September 2012 The New Hampshire Retirement System’s 0.7% investment return for fiscal year 2012 was jumped on by some as a sign the system had failed because it had not met the assumed rate of return of 7.75%. As pointed out in an earlier piece[1], for FY12, the System’s returns were about par […]