MORRISTOWN, NJ – The New Jersey’s Department of Labor and Workforce Development is reporting January 2021 jobs numbers which show New Jersey down 360,000 jobs from February 2020, immediately before Governor Phil Murphy shut down the state’s economy.
“Everybody expects 2021 to be a much better year than 2020. Unfortunately, New Jersey’s labor market numbers were rather downbeat in January. Our unemployment rate moved up from 7.7% in December to 7.9%,” explained Dr. Charles Steindel, former Chief Economist of the State of New Jersey, in an analysis for the Garden State Initiative (GSI). “There was a large (30,000) increase in the state’s workforce, and the number of employed residents rose by 20,000, but clearly there is a long way yet to go until we get to something like full employment.”
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It’s bad. How bad?
Thanks to Governor Murphy’s lockdown, New Jersey is missing a number of jobs that’s equivalent to the ENTIRE population of Mercer County.
“The payroll figures were even less promising,” added Steindel. “The number of jobs in the state rose less than 1,000 in January, on the heels of December’s 6,100 drop. The total count is more than 360,000 under last February’s peak. After the sharp rebound in the middle of 2020, the increase in jobs from September to January has been a meager 5,300.”
The state’s unemployment rate is currently the country’s 7th worst.
Click here to read the full GSI analysis.
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