TRENTON, N.J. – Rarely a day goes by without New Jersey finding itself at the bottom of a “fiscal health” list.
Next up: on Thursday, Yahoo! Finance analyzed data collected from the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Foundation for Economic Education, and Governing.com to rank the health of each U.S. state pension system. Surprising no one, New Jersey’s pension system is the country’s second least healthy.
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“The pension program in New Jersey is just 35.8% funded and is in the hole by a colossal $142.3 billion, according to the data from the Pew Charitable Trusts,” Yahoo’s editors wrote. “To close its pension gap, the state would need to collect $16,009 from each resident, including adults and children, says the Foundation for Economic Education. That would provide enough funding to pay out all of the retirement benefits that have been promised to state and local government employees in New Jersey. There are roughly 410,000.”
Click here to view the full list.
Incredibly? Only two U.S. states (Wisconsin and South Dakota) have full funded pension systems.
New Jersey is in far worse shape than its neighbors New York (94.5% funded), Delaware (82.8% funded), and Pennsylvania (55.3% funded).
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