Search Results
Briefing
Authorization to Work: The Prevalence of Occupational Licensing in New England
Proponents of occupational licensing—a policy that requires workers to obtain a government-awarded credential before they can legally practice certain professions—argue that it can reduce safety risks to consumers and improve the general quality of goods and services. Opponents argue that, given the mixed evidence of the policy’s benefits to consumers, it may needlessly impede workers’ ability to enter some professions. This Regional Brief examines the prevalence of occupational licensing in New England and considers the implications for the region’s labor markets and product ...
Briefing
Declining access to health care in northern New England
Access to health care is a major concern across the northern New England states?Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont?where rising operating costs and population loss threaten the stability of hospitals and other medical facilities that serve their surrounding rural communities. New analysis of financial data shows that many rural hospitals are operating at losses that are predictive of financial distress or even closure. Consequently, the communities served by these hospitals may be at risk of losing the benefits they provide to public health and the local economy. Addressing the financial ...
Briefing
Credit Card Delinquencies: Are New England Consumers Better Off?
Credit card accounts held by New England cardholders are less likely to carry a revolving balance or be delinquent compared with accounts held by cardholders in the rest of the country. That is the case for every income group.
Briefing
How the COVID-19 Pandemic Changed Household Migration in New England
The COVID-19 pandemic and the policies implemented to limit the spread of the virus brought about changes to domestic migration patterns in New England. Overall, the region lost about 50,000 fewer households to permanent out-migration in 2020 compared with 2019, as measured by United States Postal Service change-of-address requests. Every New England state except Massachusetts either lost fewer households or gained households for the first time since at least 2017. However, counties that added households generally saw an increase of less than 1 percent. The characteristics of a community ...
Briefing
The Challenge of Declining K–12 Enrollment in Northern New England
COVID-related public health concerns and declining tax revenues raised or continue to raise important questions throughout the country about when and how to restart schools and how to fund them in the near term. For communities across northern New England, there are also fundamental, longer-term concerns over declines in the student population that will still confront districts well beyond the current academic year. In every county in New Hampshire, Maine, andVermont, the number of young residents has declined over the last two decades. Northern New England is not alone in facing this ...
Briefing
Getting to Work in New England: Commuting Patterns across the Region
Commuting is nearly ubiquitous across New England. Employers in cities and towns large and small depend on workers who commute from communities near and far. Communities, in turn, rely on employers located in cities and towns scattered in every direction to provide jobs for their residents. Workers may choose to live in a city other than where they work for a host of reasons, including housing and transportation options, school preferences, and work locations of a partner or spouse. This Regional Brief analyzes data on current commuting patterns, using 2022 New England data primarily. While ...
Briefing
Aging and declining populations in northern New England: is there a role for immigration?
In hundreds of communities across northern New England, the population is aging rapidly and becoming smaller. The entire country is aging, but northern New England stands out: Among the populations of all US states, those of Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont have the top-three highest median ages, respectively. The situation is even more extreme in northern New England?s rural counties, where the populations of the smallest towns generally are substantially older than those of the rest of the region. These communities also have seen the slowest, or even negative, population growth over the ...
Briefing
Recent Trends in Residential Segregation in New England
Residential segregation in Boston has drawn considerable attention in recent years, but much less notice has been given to the issue with respect to the rest of New England. This regional brief focuses on residential segregation between all minority groups and non-Hispanic white residents in metro areas throughout the region. New England’s population is predominately non-Hispanic white; however, the region has diversified considerably since 1990, as most of the population growth has occurred among minority groups. Residential segregation by race/ethnicity declined over that same period in ...
Briefing
Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on New England Homeowners and Renters
Job losses and likely layoffs related to the COVID-19 pandemic will put many New England residents at risk of not being able to pay their mortgage or rent and needing financial assistance and state-government safeguards to remain in their homes. Economic interventions from Congress, primarily through the federal CARES Act, include direct payments to households and increased unemployment insurance benefits that are expected to provide vital support to many of these households for the next three to four months. Even with these efforts, 2 to 3 percent of New England homeowners and 9 to 13 ...
Briefing
A Portrait of First District Banks
This Regional Brief sketches a portrait of the banks in the Federal Reserve System’s First Federal Reserve District, which includes all of New England except Connecticut’s Fairfield County. It highlights a few characteristics that distinguish the district’s banking industry, noting that, relative to the rest of the United States, larger shares of the region’s banks are state (Federal Reserve System) member banks, state savings banks, and cooperative banks, and the share of banks classified as community banks is twice as large.