Which Letter Will This Recession Be?

By Jon Greenberg on Friday, August 14, 2009.

A national survey of economists struck a semi-optimistic note about growth in 2010. Here in New Hampshire, along with the rest of the country, the signs are mixed. NHPR’s Jon Greenberg has our weekly economic round up.

The good news comes from the housing market. The number of homes sold in July was up about 6% from a year ago. On the other hand, prices continued to fall – a little over 9%. One interesting thing about those numbers. Nearly a third of all the action is in Hillsborough county. If sales there hadn’t gone up a robust 18%, the statewide picture would look a lot worse.

A couple of indicators on the negative side. The state has more people on Food Stamps and Medicaid. The food stamp rolls in July added more than 3 thousand people to 86,848.

Personal and business bankruptcies tell sort of the same story. The bankruptcy court in Manchester reported nearly 500 filings including 16 businesses. To date, that’s about a third more than the same time last year.

There’s a debate over which letter of the alphabet this recession will most look like. UNH economist Ross Gittell thinks we might be in the bottom of big fat U. But he’s open to the possibility that the current modest uptick could turn south before it heads back up. That would make it a W.

GITTELL: The likelihood of a W shaped economy is probably significantly higher than a V shaped, that is a fast recovery.

The letter you don’t want is an L – a long period of no improvement at all.

While we’re on the subject of indicators, this one makes sense although it might not cross your mind. The demand for electricity is down. According to the Public Utilities Commission, companies in the state are using about 9% less than they once did. PUC staff call that a dramatic decline.

Life is full of small ironies, just ask the people in charge of handing out 7 billion dollars in federal stimulus money build a better broadband network. The application deadline for states was supposed to be this Friday. It’s been extended one week. The reason. The online application system locked up. It seems the private vendor, Easygrants, couldn’t handle the volume.

Looking ahead to next week, we should have the first official tally of the number of jobs due to the stimulus package.

With this round-up of the week’s economic news, I’m Jon Greenberg.