New Hampshire’s unemployment rate is at 2.7%. We may well be at or approaching a circumstance where there are more jobs than people who want to work. So what the hell is this?
In February, Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassan announced a new $8.3 million initiative aimed at helping low-income people find good-paying jobs.
New Hampshire’s economy has employed 97.3% of people looking for work. With the labor force nearing its summer of 2008 peak, and our traditionally high average hourly rate still over $20.00/hour, the Granite State can claim to have a decent job picture.
It is the sort of situation that self-perpetuates. Employers begin employing at higher rates of starting pay to tap a declining pool of bodies to employ. They reach out to more and more non-working residents. Employers invest more (without state aid) in on-the-job training to meet staffing needs. They increase the wages of existing employees to keep them. They spend more to get the resources they need to thrive.
So why is Governor Hassan getting uppity about $8.3 Million in job training money in what is becoming an employee-driven labor environment?
Called Gateway to Work and slated to have begun July 1, the program would target people making up to 200 percent of the federal poverty line, give them skills training, access to transportation or help with child care and send them to employers desperately in need of qualified workers. Ideally, a job would eliminate (the) need for public assistance.
The article even points out how a local hospital self-funded training programs so its employees would have the skills they wanted from them.
Game. Set. Match.
Now, for some strange reason, a 10-member legislative committee is assigned with the task of approving the program’s funding. Governor Hassan is trying to expedite the program’s funding, but the committee has many of the same questions or concerns you or I would have.
So why does Maggie Want it? Good optics for her Senate race?
Well, it does add ten new state workers to run the program. Ten. State. Workers.
Here is a slightly better idea. Put the $8.3 million (saved from lower enrollment in TANF we are told) in the rainy-day fund. Cut the TANF budget for next year thanks to the savings and improving the employment picture. Increase the next round of business tax cuts you didn’t want but settled for and of whose benefits you are taking credit.
Employers, please continue to hire and train your employees, free of additional bureaucratic interference. Taxpayers, revel in the fact that you won’t have to offset the carbon footprint (or political footprint) for ten new state union employees, nor will you have to finance their pay and benefits. Governor Hassan, go back to your out-of-state campaigning for a job in the US Senate, where Democrats like yourself don’t put everything in their budgets either–when they take the time look at or vote for one.
