Independent New Hampshire Journalism · Northfield, NH

Manufacturing Made 22.5 Percent of New Hampshire’s Economic Output in 1997 and 9.4 Percent in 2025. Adjusted for Prices, Its Value Added Grew 78 Percent.

Federal estimates show New Hampshire went from leaning on manufacturing far more than the nation to leaning on it slightly less. More than half of the change came from one industry, computer and electronic products, whose dollar value shrank while its inflation-adjusted value added multiplied.

In 1997, manufacturing accounted for $8.56 billion of New Hampshire’s $38.12 billion gross domestic product, or 22.5 percent. Only eight states drew a larger share of their output from manufacturing that year. For the United States as a whole, the figure was 16.1 percent. Those are the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis’s estimates, in the state-by-industry tables the bureau published on September 30, 2026, which begin with 1997.

In 2025, by the same tables, manufacturing accounted for $12.05 billion of the state’s $128.28 billion. That is 9.4 percent, which ranked New Hampshire 23rd among the 50 states. The national figure was 9.5 percent.

What gross domestic product by state measures

Gross domestic product by state is, in the bureau’s words, “the state equivalent of GDP for the nation.” Each industry’s piece is its value added: what its output is worth, less what it bought from other industries, or imported, to make it. The bureau’s current industry tables begin with 1997; its earlier estimates use older industry definitions and are not comparable. An industry’s share of the total is a measure of how much of the state’s production it accounts for. It is not a count of jobs or paychecks, and this article does not use it as one.

The dollar figures in this article are current dollars, which the bureau’s table notes describe as “not adjusted for inflation.” Shares are Granite State Report arithmetic from those figures. A separate section below uses the bureau’s inflation-adjusted series.

A steep fall, then a long slide

Most of the drop came early. Manufacturing’s share of New Hampshire’s output fell from 22.5 percent in 1997 to 17.1 percent in 1999 and to 13.8 percent in 2001. From 2005 through 2025, it moved within a narrow band, from a high of 11.8 percent in 2006 to a low of 9.4 percent in 2025.

The national share fell too, but more slowly, from 16.1 percent to 9.5 percent. New Hampshire’s share first dipped below the nation’s in 2001, edged back above it in 2003, and was below it every year from 2004 through 2025.