Business

Nationally, there are about 600,000 unfilled factory jobs.  But despite high unemployment, these jobs are proving all-but-impossible to fill, even in New Hampshire.  For one thing, most people don’t have the skills.  And many companies are handing over the training, and cost, of potential new workers to community colleges.  But that still doesn’t guarantee it will lead to new hires.

Although tourism is something of a signature industry for New Hampshire, the largest sector of the state’s economy–by far–is advanced manufacturing.  So-called “SMHT” (Smart Manufacturing/High Technology).

We'd like to know more about how small businesses are doing in Manchester. Tell us your experiences and share what you know through our Public Insight Network! Click here.

Bank of America is offering about 200,000 homeowners a chance to wipe out a big chunk of their mortgage debt. The offers are part of the settlement Bank of America and other major banks reached with state and federal regulators earlier this year, and it's one of the biggest principal forgiveness opportunities so far.

The one-time offers are arriving in the mail this week. The average reduction in principal being offered is about $150,000, says Ron Sturzenegger, an executive at Bank of America. "And when you take their new principal amount times their new interest rate, it's about a 35 percent savings from what they were paying before," he says.

As the clock winds down on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (aka: “The Stimulus Package”), it remains a controversial–and highly politicized–initiative.  This week, Grant Bosse of the conservative/libertarian New Hampshire Watchdog* project stoked the Granite State stimulus debate on the organization’s website.

Fairpoint’s struggles since taking over Verizon’s northern New England land line network in 2007 have been well-documented in the media with varying levels of snark.  A running theme the company’s cited over the years has been competition-stifling state regulations.  Now,

More than a decade ago, the New Hampshire legislature partially deregulated its electricity market.  The move was supposed to allow residential customers the chance to buy power from companies other than Public Service of New Hampshire, which dominates the state’s electricity market.  But for a long time, nothing really happened.

Now, NHPR’s Sam Evans-Brown reports one company is finally mounting a challenge to PSNH.  Resident Power guarantees customers will save at least five percent on the PSNH rate.

The House is scheduled to vote this week on a small-business tax cut bill offered up by Republicans. It's just the latest piece of legislation to focus on small businesses, which are widely praised in the political discourse as engines of job creation. The adoration is nearly universal — and it reflects something beyond economic reality.

"Small businesses create 2 out of every 3 jobs in this economy, so our recovery depends on them," President Obama said in 2012 at a New Jersey sandwich shop where he met with small-business owners.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is big on small business, too.

To people not directly involved in fixing, analyzing, or monitoring the Eurozone crisis, it can take on the character of black magic.  And it’s easy to think that the dark arts of the European Central Bank’s low-interest lending initiatives, national bond auctions, and bailout talk have little bearing on our daily lives.

In fact, they very much matter.

Like the proverbial phoenix rising from the ashes, the new Center for Women’s Business Advancement seeks to build upon the foundation of its predecessor of supporting women entrepreneurs in New Hampshire and to go much further.

The CWBA, located at Southern New Hampshire University in Manchester, celebrated its grand opening in February upon being awarded a five-year, $719,000 matching grant by the U.S. Small Business Administration.