Declining home prices continue to help residential sales in New Hampshire. Prices are down about 11 percent and sales for the year are a hair above what they were in 2008.

Real estate agents are pleased with the October numbers. After a grim period stretching from last fall to early spring, there’s been a consistent if modest upward trend. The number of homes sold last month rose compared to this September and compared to October a year ago. The data come from the New Hampshire Association of Realtors.

Activity in Hillsborough, Merrimack and Rockingham counties drove up the statewide average. An important underlying factor has been declining home prices. The median sales price in October was about 5 thousand less than the month before, making homes more affordable.

October 2009 showed a 23 percent increase in condo sales over October 2008. Prices were almost the same as last year.

Concern over the federal tax credit for first time buyers might also have played a role. It had been due to expire in November which lent an urgency to some transactions. Congress passed an extension early this month.

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The state unemployment rate fell 4-tenths of a percent in October.

Unemployment dropped to 6.8 percent. The decline caught most analysts by surprise. Usually, when the national rate rises, as it did, so does the state’s.

Economist Annette Nielsen with the labor market information bureau says the job growth is real. The rate is not due to lots of people dropping out of the labor force. But Nielsen takes a cautious view.

Nielsen: "I would like to see a couple of months before I would definitely say this is what’s going on."

Private sector jobs held even. Losses in one area were offset by gains in others.

The real growth driver was state and local government jobs which would include schools. Those sectors added 2200 jobs, almost the entire net increase for the state.

See the official release here.

See the sector by sector breakdown here.

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The number of Food Stamp recipients rose about 3,2% to 94,750 during October. The increase of 2,930 was almost as large as the last big jump back in July when the rolls went up 3,059. Since June 2008, the Food Stamp program is serving 42% more people.

Medicaid rolls also increased to almost 116,000, an increase of 1114. This was somewhat larger than the increases of July, August and September.

Through the lens of state spending, Medicaid is far more significant than Food Stamps because the state pays a bit under 40% of the cost of Medicaid whereas the cost of Food Stamps is shouldered entirely by Washington.

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Personal and business bankruptcies continue to climb. October saw a total of 466. The New Hampshire Business Review has been doing a good job of tracking this. NHBR's Bob Sanders writes that 14 businesses filed, including Spaulding Hill Development and Hawkview Estates, both of Nashua.

Sanders has been doing the math. He writes that the running total is 4,324, 34 percent more than the number of bankruptcies filed by this time last year.

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At a recent talk to the Business and Professional Women organization I focused on two related issues: If this recession was our Katrina, how much damage did it inflict on the economic infrastructure? One thing we don't know is when credit markets will recover.

So it was with some interest that I read this article in the Washington Post. I think it captures our current economic situation, nationally, and points our eyes in the right direction as we look for signs of true recovery.

The take home assessment is this "The idea behind the government interventions was to boost economic activity when it otherwise would be far below its potential, supporting demand for goods and services of all types and helping instill confidence that the nation is not entering a downward economic spiral. Having bridged that down period, the economy should begin to improve on its own momentum as businesses ramp up production and begin hiring and making investments again.

That's the idea, anyway. But fundamental changes are occurring in the economy that could slow growth for some time. The United States needs to shift away from consumption and home building and toward business investment and exports. Meanwhile, whole industries from financial services to auto manufacturing to news media are being fundamentally remade. "

See the whole article here.

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The phrase of the day from the NH Housing Finance Authority is the state "is bouncing along the bottom" of the downturn in the housing market. They actually call the collapse of prices a "correction" but I say, call a spade a spade.

The number of foreclosures deeds in September was 287 -- 11% more than in September 2008. The number of foreclosure auction notices, a step that precedes the final act of foreclosure, was 756. That's 5% higher than the month before and 12% higher than a year ago. Not good news.

However, looking at the overall trend for the year, the NHHFA predicts the number of foreclosures will probably be a few percent less than in 2008.

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The October 2009 Beige Book has this summary of the New England Region:

Results for retailers, manufacturers, and advertising and consulting firms are mixed, but many contacts cite a slower pace of decline, stabilization, or some pickup in activity. Residential real estate markets continue to show positive signs, while commercial real estate remains in the doldrums. Business contacts indicate that selling prices are level or have moved only slightly. Wage increases are very modest or zero; large layoffs appear to have ended, but hiring remains very limited. A slow recovery is expected in 2010.

Read it all here.

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Depending on how you count a job, see my story on this way back when, stimulus spending has paid for 3,007 jobs or 1,862 as of the end of September. The total hours covered is the same -- nearly 3.9 million hours -- but depending on how you divide those hours into full-time jobs, you end up with different answers.

The latest figures come from a report by the NH Office of Economic Stimulus. The report also notes that ARRA has pumped an extra $19.5 million in unemployment benefits into the state -- see a recent Briefing Room item on how that's kept personal income numbers from declining in the state - and provided some $965 million in contracts, grants and loans.

The breakdown: $22,249,485 in contracts, $759,449,938 in grants, and $183,768,630 in loans.

The total includes $407 million approved by the Governor and Executive Council.

See the full report here.

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A billion here, a billion there; pretty soon you're talking real money. Personal income in NH rose about 100 million dollars between the first and second quarters of 2009 for a grand total of $56,330,000,000.

As a percentage, that's not much but there would have been a steeper decline if federal stimulus payments in the form of higher unemployment checks and other programs had not gone up by about a billion dollars from a year ago. Total transfer payments were $8.38 billion.

See the national level news release here.

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