Policy Blog NH

Private Versus Public Sector Wages in New Hampshire

Conventional wisdom suggests that state jobs don’t pay as well as those in the private sector, but that the non-wage benefits are superior.  A recent article in the June 2011 "Business NH Magazine" by the Center’s economist, Dennis Delay, examined the data and found that New Hampshire state employees, on average, are paid about the same as private sector employees, excluding non-wage benefits like health insurance and pensions.  But those averages don’t necessarily tell the whole story. There are big differences between the paychecks earned by private and state sector workers is several fields, depending on the type of work. And the figures don’t necessarily account for differences in education and experience between private and public sector workers in the same field.

Building the Budget: Your turn

The debate over NH's two-year budget entered its final phase this week, as House and Senate negotiators began hashing out the differences in their proposals. But for all you non-legislators out there, the Center has developed an online interactive tool to give you your own chance at budget-building.

Our online calculator, which you can find here, lets you craft a budget using many of the same options available to legislators. You can raise or lower revenue estimates, cut or increase taxes, and chose from an array of spending priorities: health and human services, education, state payroll, and more. The tool is also designed to provide context to the sorts of spending priorities that policymakers face when building the state's spending plan.

Test your budgetwriting abilities, and then let us know what you think by emailing dbarrick@nhpolicy.org.

Counting on the Future – The Tricky Business of Revenue Forecasts

When it comes to New Hampshire’s tax revenues, recent news has been both good and bad.

The good news: tax receipts are above where they were a year ago, with revenues for the General and Education Trust Funds up nearly 1.5 percent from this time last year.

Now the bad news: With just one month left in the current fiscal year (FY2011), New Hampshire’s tax receipts are lagging behind forecast. Tax receipts for May 2011 came in strong, but it wasn’t enough to offset shortfalls in prior months, particularly in April.