This post looks at what sectors of the New Jersey economy are growing, stagnating, and shrinking relative to the national economy. It is a follow up to my county-by-county look at regional job growth.
The source is the Bureau of Labor Statistics's Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages. Like my post looking at job gains/losses in county-level terms, the data goes from 2010 to March 2017.
As we can see, every single sector of the NJ economy - with the exceptions of "Other Services" and Local Government - is doing worse than the national economy.
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| Source https://www.bls.gov/cew/datatoc.htm |
Oy. This is not good.
WTF on the growth of local government? According to the BLS, Local Government employment grew from 404,312 to 417,244. Although that's not a lot in absolute terms, New Jersey's population is one of the most slowly growing in the country, there is no justification for local government employment to grow so much relative to the national baseline.
NJ also outperformed the nation in "other services," but I do not know what that includes and it is only a net gain of 12,200 jobs.
This is what the jobs data for NJ looks like in terms of absolute numbers:
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| Source https://www.bls.gov/cew/datatoc.htm |
NJ's net employment gain (public & private sectors) was only 219,445.
Based on the above chart with absolute numbers you might think that NJ was doing well with "Service-providing" jobs, but the 219,445 gain is only 8%. The national average gain in that sector was 14%. Also, this is not a highly-paying sector of the economy, so the increase does not provide that much revenue to the NJ Treasury.
A Continuation of Pre-Christie Problems
I need to emphasize that NJ's economic problems predate Chris Christie, a point that gets lost in many missives from groups like the NJ Policy Perspective, which date NJ's problems to the start of the Great Recession, but do not acknowledge that the problems existed prior to the Great Recession. (example 1, example 2 etc etc)
During the seven years previous, from 2003 to 2010, New Jersey also significantly lagged the national economy in all of the same categories it lagged the nation in from 2010-2017.
During those years NJ's employment fell by 2.98% (-114,000 jobs), while the country gained 11.34%, which is actually a larger gap than the 13.4%-7% gap from 2010-2017.
Obviously 2010 was the trough of the recession, which hit NJ harder than most states, but even if you looked back to NJ's peak employment in January 2008, NJ's job performance would be only 2.1%.
This is a chart showing NJ's dismal job performance in the seven years before Christie.
NJ's history of economic stagnation precedes Chris Christie and will outlast him. Like I've said before, New Jersey is up against several powerful macroeconomic forces and carries the country's heaviest debt load.
Given the macroeconomic forces, trends, and debt lined up against us, it's going to be clearer than ever that we need to redistribute Adjustment Aid and scale back Abbott utopianism.
I need to emphasize that NJ's economic problems predate Chris Christie, a point that gets lost in many missives from groups like the NJ Policy Perspective, which date NJ's problems to the start of the Great Recession, but do not acknowledge that the problems existed prior to the Great Recession. (example 1, example 2 etc etc)
During the seven years previous, from 2003 to 2010, New Jersey also significantly lagged the national economy in all of the same categories it lagged the nation in from 2010-2017.
During those years NJ's employment fell by 2.98% (-114,000 jobs), while the country gained 11.34%, which is actually a larger gap than the 13.4%-7% gap from 2010-2017.
Obviously 2010 was the trough of the recession, which hit NJ harder than most states, but even if you looked back to NJ's peak employment in January 2008, NJ's job performance would be only 2.1%.
This is a chart showing NJ's dismal job performance in the seven years before Christie.
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| Source: https://www.bls.gov/cew/datatoc.htm |
NJ's history of economic stagnation precedes Chris Christie and will outlast him. Like I've said before, New Jersey is up against several powerful macroeconomic forces and carries the country's heaviest debt load.
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