July 2021 job gains notwithstanding, New Jersey is still missing 275,000 jobs that existed in February 2021. That’s according to an analysis of the latest jobs numbers released by the Garden State Initiative (GSI).
“New Jersey’s July unemployment numbers were softer than the job figures,” explained Dr. Charles Steindel, the state’s former chief economist. “The unemployment rate ticked up from June’s 7.2% to 7.3%, widening our gap with the national figure (5.4% in July) to nearly two percentage points. The 9,000 increase in our labor force was at least in line with the national figure of 261,000, but the 7,500 increase in resident employment was paltry compared to a nation-wide surge of more than 1 million.”
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New Jersey would be back to normal sometime in 2022 or 2023 contingent upon the current rate of growth continuing, whether the Delta variant leads to future disruptions, and, according to Steindel, “yesterday the Bureau of Labor Statistics released data suggesting that the number of jobs in New Jersey’s total was significantly understated early this year; quite possibly by more than 50,000.”
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