It’s a good time to be a worker in New Hampshire, and 2025 could bring more of the same.
The state’s unemployment rate stands at 2.5% as the calendar turns, just a tick under the 2.6% rate recorded in January 2024, a sign of a healthy labor market in which just about everyone who wants a job can find one.
That continued demand for workers is fueling relatively strong wage growth, year-over-year, of nearly 5%, which is outpacing inflation and driving consumer spending.
“As long as consumers are spending, as long as layoffs aren’t high and aren’t rising, then the economy is on a pretty good footing,” says Brian Gottlob, director of the economic and labor market information bureau at New Hampshire Employment Security. “It’s very difficult to have a recession in that scenario.”
Gottlob said the largest variable that continues to hold back the state’s economy is the housing crunch.
“It makes it more difficult for us to grow our labor force, which we often do by people moving here from other places,” he said.
For industries including hospitality, manufacturing and healthcare — specifically nursing —finding workers has been a continuous challenge since the pandemic, when large numbers of workers retired early or looked for work in other professions. Those industries continue to struggle to find enough people to fill open positions.
Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show there are still nearly 10,000 fewer employed residents in the state now than there were shortly before the pandemic, a sign that demand for workers is likely to persist in the year ahead.
