New Jersey has Gained back only 58% of the jobs lost due to the Coronavirus Pandemic

the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Trenton NJ, New Jersey’s lackluster recovery private sector employers added to their payrolls in November for the seventh consecutive month while employment in the public sector moved lower. Estimates produced by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics indicate that total nonfarm wage and salary employment in New Jersey increased by 7,100 in November to reach a seasonally adjusted level of 3,896,300. The gains were recorded in the private sector (+9,700) of the state’s economy while employment in the public sector fell by 2,600.

New Jersey has now regained a total of 485,700 jobs in the six months since April, or about 58 percent of the jobs lost due to the coronavirus pandemic and measures taken in response to it. The state’s unemployment rate increased by 2.2 percentage points to 10.2 percent in November, mainly due to New Jersey residents re-entering the labor force seeking employment over the month. See the technical notes at the end of this release for information about the impact of the coronavirus on this month’s employment estimates.

The New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development has distributed a record $20 billion in wage replacement benefits in the 39 weeks since Governor Murphy abruptly shuttered businesses and schools around the state. 

The figure includes state payments and federal benefits authorized under the CARES Act, which enabled a whole new population of workers – including those who are self-employed or who can’t work because of COVID-19 – to collect, even if they never paid into the Unemployment Trust Fund. CARES Act funds expire on Dec. 26 unless Congress approves a new stimulus bill. 

The Department received 16,368 new applications for unemployment during the week of Dec. 12, a slight (3.8 percent) decrease from the prior week. The total number of New Jersey workers having filed for unemployment since mid-March now stands at 1.86 million. The average benefit per claimant now exceeds $14,000. 

“When we began the year at almost full employment, it was unfathomable we would be nearing year’s end having given out more than $20 billion in unemployment benefits to workers in need,” said Labor Commissioner Robert Asaro-Angelo. “We are now getting ready to distribute additional aid, and are hopeful Congress will act.”