New Jersey’s job market is still missing 146,700 positions that existed in February 2020 before Governor Phil Murphy’s lockdown began. That’s according to newly-released September 2021 data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics for all 50 states.
New Jersey’s unemployment rate (7.1%) is now America’s 3rd highest.
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“The unemployment rate did tick down from 7.2% to 7.1%, but the gap to the national rate widened even more to a yawning 2.3 percentage points,” observed Dr. Charles Steindel, former Chief Economist of the State of New Jersey, in a Friday analysis for the Garden State Initiative. “After ranking 4th highest in August, New Jersey rose to the 3rd highest unemployment rate in a tie with New York, while California and Nevada tied for the highest rate at 7.5%. Of note, according to today’s report, New Jersey is one of two states that has not seen a statistically significant drop in its unemployment rate over the last 12 months (the figure has moved from 7.8% to 7.1%, but that’s within the margin of error). The only other state in this camp is Maine, but Maine’s move was from 4.9% to 4.8%.”
