The Drain
New Hampshire markets itself as one of the best states for business — low taxes, light regulation, open for commerce. But a business needs two things the brochure never mentions: workers who can afford to live here, and customers with money to spend. Both are quietly draining out. “Best for business” can’t be true if the people business depends on keep getting subtracted.
The Founder’s Question
New Hampshire claims to be one of the best states in the country for business. I moved here running a strong business. COVD-19 hit, I became a single parent to children with disabilities, no help - they only connect the two in order to deny benefits, not to help stabilize you.
— Mark, founder of 603 Circle
This is where the other cracks empty out
The Scissor, the Ruler, the Wall, the Vanishing Slot — each one pushes a family toward the edge. The Drain is the edge. It’s where the workforce, the customers, and the families a state needs to function flow out, one household at a time.
What’s promoted
A top-ranked business tax climate and a “Live Free or Die” pitch built to attract employers and high earners.
What’s draining out
Workers priced out of housing, parents pushed out by missing childcare, and families leaving for states that actually help — taking their spending and their labor with them.
Pull one, lose two
- A third of the market already has nothing left to spend. When roughly 35% of New Hampshire households can’t cover the basics, that’s a third of local demand that never reaches a register — the family budget runs out before the spending starts.United For ALICE, 2024; see The Ruler
- One failed support removes two people, not one. When care for a child or a dependent falls through, it takes out the person who needed the care and the parent who has to leave work to provide it. A single gap subtracts two from the workforce at once.603 Circle framing: “Pull One, Lose Two”
- It lands directly on Main Street. About 99% of New Hampshire’s employers are small businesses, so demand pulled out of local households doesn’t hit some distant balance sheet — it hits the shop down the road that needed those customers to walk in.U.S. Small Business Administration, NH Small Business Profile
The data doesn’t add up — and that’s the crack
“Best state for business” and “a third of households can’t afford to spend, and the caregivers among them keep getting pulled out of work” are both true at once — and the gap between them is the crack. A great tax code is necessary; it isn’t sufficient. The supply side and the demand side are the same economy, and right now one of them is draining.
A state can be the best place to start a business and the hardest place to keep the people who make it work. New Hampshire is becoming both.
This is the demand-side case 603 Circle carries to New Hampshire’s business leadership. To see all of it land on one family at once, read The Invisible Children.
Sources
- United For ALICE, 2024 release; approximately 35% of New Hampshire households below the ALICE Threshold (see The Ruler for full citation).
- U.S. Small Business Administration, New Hampshire Small Business Profile; small businesses represent roughly 99% of New Hampshire employers.
- “Pull One, Lose Two” is 603 Circle’s analytic framing of how a single failed support removes both a dependent’s caregiver and the dependent from the workforce and local economy.
- NOTE (not published): modeled state-level figures — suppressed-spending dollar range, new-business-formation ranking, employer childcare-impact survey percentages, and the disability services age-out comparison — are held pending verification of source and methodology.