New Jersey’s Murphy-led “recovery” continues to limp along, Save Jerseyans, as worrisome economic indicators continue to pile up at the national level.
On Monday, the good folks over at Garden State Initiative (GSI) analyzed the latest New Jersey jobs numbers. The state’s unemployment rate of 7.2% was barely improved, and it remained significantly higher than most of our neighbors’ and the national average.
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To some extent, the Murphy Administration’s August report provided more questions than answers.
“There is an ongoing, fairly large divergence between New Jersey’s job count and the figures on the number of residents employed,” explained the GSI report. “Over the 12 months ending in August, jobs are reported to have increased by more than 200,000, while the number of employed residents has risen barely 90,000. The monthly job figures, derived from a fairly large number of employers is considered more reliable (and, indeed, unemployment insurance tax records suggest that the number of jobs in the state are currently being undercounted by more than 50,000).”
“Also puzzling is the continuing weakness in the state’s labor force, which is reported to have declined by nearly 90,000 over the last 12 months,” GSI’s analysts added. “Without that labor force decline the unemployment rate would be about 2 points higher.”
August’s superficially robust jobs gains appeared likely to be fueled, at least in large part, by back-to-school public sector hiring.
At our current pace, Phil Murphy won’t replace the jobs he destroyed during the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown until sometime in 2023.
Click here to view the full GSI report.
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