Both New Hampshire and Vermont have unemployment rates below their pre-fake-pandemic numbers. Reporting for July puts Vermont at 2.1% and New Hampshire at 2.0%. But there’s a critical difference hiding in that reported 0.1%.
At its peak before the politicians collapsed the job market, the Granite State’s labor force was 777,514, and unemployment was at 2.6%. A month into the flu scare, the labor force fell to 736,472 as over 41,000 people (5.3%) were out of the workforce or no longer counted.
The Granite State’s workforce currently includes 1500 more people than before the Wuhan Flu. In other words, that 2% unemployment rate results from not just having a larger workforce than pre-pandemic levels but employing more of them.
New Hampshire also started adding people back into its workforce the month after the initial collapse. In May of 2021, the NH workforce was back to 759,700; in August 2021, it was at 766,720. It would float around 750,000 plus or minus until the Spring of 2022 when it would begin to climb to its current high.
Across the Connecticut River in the Blue Green Mountain State, the Labor force was at 358,276 before Gov. Scott began rolling out his employment suppression policies statewide. Unlike New Hampshire, Vermont didn’t experience a one-month collapse. Their first-month drop was only 15,000 (4.2%), which would continue to decline until it hit bottom in January of 2021 at 324,435, with a total of 33,841 people (9.4%) knocked out of their workforce.
A more significant overall percentage than in the Granite State.
Vermont was experiencing a historically significant labor force participation expansion before the overreaction to COVID19 but has failed to get back to that total. So, where did those people go? Why did they give up looking for work? The state, like New Hampshire, has plenty of jobs in every sector. Even traditional entry-level employment starts at 15-18.00 per hour or more.
Vermont has fewer people looking for work and 2.1% unemployment, while New Hampshire has more people looking at 2% unemployment.
Some of that may be the demographics of both the state and jobs. It could be unemployment compensation rates. New Hampshire has a larger population and GDP. We also abandoned the Federal COVID handouts several months before Vermont. The state is also not blue. Vermont has been developing its hippie entitlement culture for decades, while New Hampshire clings to the mask of Live Free or Die.
There’s no good explanation, but I’d like to think it is because we don’t want to pay people to sit on their asses, but I’m not convinced that’s why. Whatever the case, New Hampshire is doing something better than most of New England, and we need to make sure we keep doing it and, if possible, doing it better.