MORRISTOWN, NJ – The economic outlook for New Jersey workers remained grim despite a 12,100 private sector job gain in February 2021. The state remains 350,000 jobs off of its pre-COVID-19 2020 high.
We also now know that New Jersey experienced a net wage decrease in 2020 thanks to a new analysis from Garden State Initiative (GSI) of the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis’s State Annual Personal Income, 2020 (Preliminary) and State Quarterly Personal Income, 4th Quarter 2020 reports.
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“New Jersey’s personal income for 2020 looked superficially good. Our gain of 6.8% for the year as a whole was higher than the national increase of 6.1%, and ranked 17th in the nation,” explained Dr. Charles Steindel, a former Chief Economist for the state. “However, when we look at the portion of personal income earned from work–wages and self-employment income–a very different picture emerges, with New Jersey seeing an outright decline of more than 1% (1.2%), while the nation saw a small increase (0.3%).
“New Jersey’s 2020 income was massively supported by a huge increase in transfer payments (unemployment insurance and all the other benefits associated with the CARES Act); this of course occurred elsewhere but was especially large here,” Steindel added. “When we look at income growth from the third to fourth quarters of 2020–as opposed to the full year–New Jersey ranked a dismal 44th, as the fading out of the federal relief hit harder here than elsewhere.”
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