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Employment Security briefs committee on unemployment trust fund, rates and labor market trends
Summary
Richard Labors of New Hampshire Employment Security summarized how the state's unemployment program is funded, recent trust-fund solvency, current tax rates and labor market indicators including low unemployment and strong job demand.
New Hampshire Employment Security told the House Labor Committee the state's unemployment insurance program is fully employer funded, the trust fund balance is at historically high levels and the taxable-rate structure currently yields low employer tax burdens.
"The unemployment system is a 100% employer funded," Deputy Commissioner Richard Labors told the committee as he summarized the agency's three bureaus: unemployment compensation, reemployment services and labor market information. He said taxes are collected on employers' first $14,000 in annual wages and explained experience‑rated tables that raise rates for chronically negative employers.
Labors described the trust fund as "about $390,000,000," said the average employer is paying about 0.6% (roughly $85 per employee per year), and that a new employer starts at 2.7% before current solvency reductions (a 1.0% reduction reduced a new employer's rate to about 1.7% in testimony). He noted that New Hampshire's maximum weekly benefit is $427 and that average claim duration is running about 12.5 weeks. "Those funds sit with the U.S. Treasury," he said when explaining how state tax receipts and benefit disbursements operate.
Richard Lavers, deputy commissioner with Employment Security, said the department routinely sends proposed statutory changes to the U.S. Department of Labor for conformity review and emphasized the federal link to private‑sector options. Lavers summarized a US DOL response to a bill concept that warned a private alternative could jeopardize employers' FUTA credit and federal grants: "If employers were not participating in the state unemployment compensation program and weren't paying their contributions to support that program, that would disqualify them from being able to take their discount against their federal unemployment tax liability," he told the committee.
Messages to the committee included that New Hampshire's unemployment rate is low compared with the region, job demand remains elevated in sectors such as professional, technical and scientific services and healthcare faces staffing pressures, and that Employment Security operates 12 New Hampshire Works offices for reemployment services. The department offered to provide additional statistics and data on topics members raised, including minimum-wage earners and remote‑work tracking.
