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-- New Jersey Economy - Overview
* Economy * Employers * Growth Companies * Venture Capital * Labor Unions * Real Estate * Transportation * Health * Law Firms 
-- Overview Since its early colonial settlement, New Jersey's economy has evolved from its first base in farming and trade, to manufacturing and, most recently, to reliance on service and technology-based industries. The influence of private sector business ventures with New Jersey government also long has been controversial. Commencing in the 1830s, the state government's close--and often corrupt--relationship with the Camden and Amboy Railroad, which financed much of the state government's budget through its operations, led to cynics branding New Jersey as "the state of the Camden and Amboy." Toward the end of the century, the state legislature's approval of laws catering to the interests of giant corporate trusts and monopolies to attract them to legally incorporate in the state brought charges by a leading muckraker that New Jersey was a "traitor state." The state's role as a national leader in manufacturing--which evolved after the Civil War with its key location on the central railroad corridor, access to raw materials and a workforce of recent immigrants--began to erode in the latter years of the last century. In the 1970s, particularly after the spike in energy prices following the Arab oil embargo in 1973, New Jersey lost both existing and potential investment as other locations offered advantages in lower-cost labor, real estate, taxes and energy supplies, resulting in the state experiencing its highest levels of unemployment since the Great Depression of the 1930s. More recent economic trends have seen the growth of technology-based manufacturing industries in electronics, computers and medical devices, as well as a shift toward service industries such as finance and health care. In 2020 and 2021, New Jersey suffered the economic impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic which led to lockdowns and sharp cutbacks in employment, spending and other activity. -- Gross Domestic Product
New Jersey had the eighth largest economy of the 50 states in the second quarter of 2021, as measured by Gross Domestic Product, the most frequent measure of economic activity which includes wages and salaries, income earned by entrepreneurs and corporations and business taxes that count as a business expense. The state’s current-dollar GDP was $ 671,4 billion, and grew 6.4% over the year, lagging the 6.7% increase for the nation as a whole. On a per capita basis, New Jersey had $73,451 in GDP for each person in its population in 2019, the ninth highest of the states led by New York with $90,043. * New Jersey Economy at a Glance, Bureau of Labor Statistics, US Department of Labor * Regional Economic Accounts, Bureau of Economic Analysis, US Department of Commerce -- Employment
In the fall of 2021, New Jersey's total full and part-time employment was just under 4 million persons. The leading sectors of private employment were trade, transportation and utilities; education and health services; professional and business services; and leisure and hospitality. After lagging the nation and nearby states in employment since the recession which began in 2008, the state's unemployment rate steadily improved into 2019, but sharply declined as businesses closed and laid off thousands as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Its unemployment rate spiked in the summer of 2020 to 11%, but had declined to 7.2% as of August 2021, a rate which still tied for the fourth highest of all states (behind Nevada, California and New York). Even before the the COVID-19 reversal, New Jersey's recovery from the recession following the 2008 financial crisis had been affected by contraction in financial services, pharmaceuticals and casino-hotels. In financial services, such major state employers as Merrill Lynch merged with other firms resulting in massive job losses. Pharmaceuticals, a traditional leader in both the locations of executive headquarters and manufacturing facilities, has gone through a period of consolidation and mergers that has reduced employment; New Jersey pharmaceutical manufacturing employment, which accounted for one-fifth of all jobs in the sector in the US at the end of the last century, has declined so that in 2015 it was less than 10% of the jobs in the nation. Casino-hotels have experienced the most dramatic reversals, with direct employment--which once peaked at over 40,000 jobs--was cut by a third with the closing of four of the City's 12 casinos, resulting in an unemployment rate in Atlantic City twice the level of that for the state as a whole. The re-opening of two of the closed casinos in 2018--the new Hard Rock and the Ocean Resort--marked a recovery in the Atlantic City employment situation. * New Jersey Economy at a Glance, Bureau of Labor Statistics, US Department of Labor * Bureau of Labor Statistics, US Department of Labor -- Largest industries
The largest sector in New Jersey have been finance, insurance, real estate, rental, and leasing. This industry has accounted for about a quarter of New Jersey GDP, compared to 20% for the nation. The second largest industry was professional and business services. The largest contributor to real GDP growth in New Jersey was nondurable goods manufacturing, with computer and electronic manufacturing comprising approximately one-fourth of all manufacturing output. * Regional Economic Accounts, Bureau of Economic Analysis, US Department of Commerce -- Personal income
State personal income across all states decreased 21.8% at an annual rate in the second quarter of 2021 after increasing 56.9% in the first quarter, according to estimates by the US Bureau of Economic Analysis New Jersey's decline was 16.6%, As with other economic measures, the national and state declines in income during 2020 and 2021 were attributed largely to the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2019, New Jersey had a median income for all households of $82,545; per capita personal income of $42,745, which ranked 4th in the United States and was 125% of the national average of $51,640. 2017, Somerset County had the highest per capita income at $96,548; Passaic County was the lowest at $48,152. New Jersey had the highest concentration of millionaires in 2018 of all 50 states, with 293,992 millionaires comprising 8.95% of its 3.2 million households, ahead of #2 Connecticut (8.89%) and #3 Maryland (8.85%). As in the nation, the issue of lagging wage growth and income inequality have increasingly become a focus of public policy debate. * New Jersey Per Capita Personal Income 1930-2019, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis * Bearfacts New Jersey, Bureau of Economic Analysis, US Department of Commerce * American Fact Finder, US Census Bureau -- Poverty
In 2020, the national poverty rate was 11.4%, up 1.0 percentage point from 2019. This was the first increase in poverty after five consecutive annual declines12.3%, representing 39.7 million people in poverty living below the federal poverty level of $24,000 for a family of four. In New Jersey, the rate was 9.2%, down from 11.4% in 2013, but still higher than the 8.7% rate in 2004. Poverty levels for minorities are significantly above the state average; about 20% of African-American and Hispanic New Jerseyans live below the federal poverty level. Despite recent progress, Newark, Camden and Paterson remain among the poorest large cities in the nation. Poverty levels were above 50% in Passaic, Lakewood, Paterson, Trenton and Newark. * Income and Poverty in the US 2020, US Census Bureau * American Community Survey 2013-2017, US Census Bureau |
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-- Government subsidies and incentives
New Jersey provides various subsidies and tax credits through several programs, with most of them administered through the state Economic Development Authority created in 1974 by Governor Brendan Byrne. The amount of these subsidies was substantially increased during the Christie Administration; an audit released in January 2019 prepared at the direction of Governor Murphy criticized the lack of oversight of job creation data by the EDA, which has been responsible for nearly $11 billion in grants and tax credits intended to prevent companies from leaving the state or encouraging them to expand. The largest portion of that amount--$3.9 billion--was from Grow NJ, created by a 2013 law under the Christie administration. The report also found little evidence that the incentives had influenced expansion or site decisions and that the program had shifted from its original goal of creating new, permanent jobs to preventing the loss of jobs "at risk" of moving out-of-state. In some cases, the report found that the aid had contributed to companies simply relocating within the state from one town to another. In 2021, legislation was enacted to reform the EDA financing practices and strengthen its monitoring of job creation and other conditions attached to grants and loans. * New Jersey Economic Development Authority * New Jersey Economic Development Authority: A Performance Audit, January 2019, New Jersey State Comptroller Economy * Economy * Employers * Growth Companies * Venture Capital * Labor Unions * Real Estate * Transportation * Health * Law Firms |