By Vince Calio, June 5, 2017 at 12:51 PM
Amtrak and NJ Transit would use a new Gateway tunnel under the Hudson River. – (AARON HOUSTON)
Private firms will be sought to help finance and construct the $20 billion rail tunnel connecting northern New Jersey and New York City.
During its June 1 board meeting, the Gateway Program Development Board approved a move to solicit private construction and finance companies to complete the project under a public-private partnership model. In a typical P3 procurement model, private financial institutions would raise part of the money for a public project through a combination of debt and direct equity infusions, and then hire outside construction firms to complete it.
If implemented, the procurement model could pump several billion dollars into both New York and New Jersey’s economy, said the board’s chairman, Richard Bagger, during the meeting.
A significant decline in the number of NJ high school graduates who will be seeking college degrees should be a major concern for the next governor and other leaders
Daryl G. Greer
New Jersey will experience about a 20 percent decline in the number of high school graduates through 2030, according to a recent report, “Knocking at the College Door,” by the Western Interstate Commission on Higher Education (WICHE.) That will mean a drop to 90,000 from a current high of about 111,000 graduates annually, and more of these students will be from lower- income families and less-prepared academically for college.
That has important economic consequences for colleges, students, businesses, and the state — which need to be considered, now.
Historically, 70 percent to 80 percent of New Jersey high school graduates enroll in college. Obviously, fewer students paying tuition places stress on colleges’ financial operations. This is especially true, because about 70 percent of public colleges’ revenue comes from student tuition and fees. Add to this increasing competition for New Jersey students from surrounding states, such as Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Massachusetts, which also face declining enrollments. Pile on another dilemma in a no-growth environment: New Jersey already leads the nation as the number one net exporter of college-bound students. We lose about 30,000 students annually to other states. Regional competition for well-prepared New Jersey students who are able to pay for college will be at an all-time high. Not every university in the state can compete effectively for students in this environment.
Ridgewood NJ, President Donald Trump announced the U.S. would withdraw from the Paris climate pact. In a decision that spurns pleas from corporate executives who stood to gain , world leaders who would access US tax payer funds and even Pope Francis who warned the move imperils a global fight against climate change proving “Climate Change ” is religion not science .
“The Obama-negotiated accord imposes unrealistic targets on the U.S. for reducing our carbon emissions, while giving countries like China a free pass for years to come,” the White House said.
President Trump once again defended US Taxpayers who would fund the so called “Paris Accord” , pointing out the the many instances where the accord sought to redistribute and strip America’s wealth and industry to the rest of the world and imperil
the US economy.
The President also went to great lengths pointing out how the “Paris Accord” would reduce America’s sovereignty giving outsiders control of US domestic agenda .
The only way to stem our tide of outmigration is to bring our economic policies in line with our direct regional competitors — Pennsylvania and New York
NJBIA president and CEO Michele Siekerka
New Jersey has many positive attributes. We added almost 60,000 jobs in 2016, the state’s largest gain since 2000, according to the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development. We have among the best K-12 public education systems in the nation and a highly skilled workforce including the highest concentration of scientists and engineers in the world — more than 225,000 statewide.
New Jersey also has a strong transportation network. We are home to the Port of New York and New Jersey, the third largest seaport in North America and the largest and busiest maritime cargo center on the East Coast. And we are among the national leaders in logistics and distribution. New Jersey is also a great recreation state with more than 130 miles of shoreline, beautiful parks, and mountains.
Despite these great assets, New Jersey remains a significant outlier, both nationally and regionally when comparing competitiveness and affordability including our state’s high cost of living and its heavy tax burden. New Jersey’s border states, Pennsylvania and New York, continue to be the No. 1 and No. 2 outmigration states for New Jersey residents and are challenging our competitiveness.
To reverse this trend we must examine our policies on taxation, revenue generation, and spending, and we must do so through the filter of competitiveness and affordability.
Ridgewood NJ, President Trump’s first proposed budget shows respect for the people who pay the bills. The administration’s “Calvin Coolidge style” proposal reverses the damaging trends from previous administrations by putting our nation’s budget back into balance and reducing our debt through fiscally conservative principles, all the while delivering on President Trump’s campaign promise not to cut Social Security retirement or Medicare. The budget’s combination of regulatory, tax, and welfare reforms will provide opportunities for economic growth and creation.
Trump Budget Facts:
President Trump’s budget is designed to put the taxpayer first, create jobs, and build economic growth.
President Trump’s budget finally balances the Federal budget and turns the deficit into a $16 billion surplus by 2027.
President Trump’s budget makes national defense a top priority by increasing defense spending by $54 billion.
President Trump’s budget increases funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs by $4.3 billion.
President Trump’s budget puts Americans’ safety first by providing $2.6 billion in increased funding for border security.
President Trump’s budget balances the budget and makes no cuts to either Medicare or Social Security retirement.
President Trump’s budget provides national paid family leave for the first time in the history of this country.
President Trump’s budget helps American families by implementing the first national paid family leave initiative.
President Trump’s budget saves the American people billions of dollars through welfare and regulatory reform.
President Trump’s budget sees a decline in debt as a percentage of GDP every year in the budget window.
file photo by ArtChick SEASONAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES
May 21,2017
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, Applications are being sought for the many summer positions available with the Parks and Recreation Department including Day Camp Administrators, Day Camp Counselors, Graydon Pool Lifeguards, Security Attendants, and Badge Sale Attendants. Concession Attendant applications will be shared with the Water’s Edge vendor. NOTE: Day Camp staff attendance is mandatory for the full six week program, June 26 to August 4, 2017.
Applications will be considered for experience, interests, and accomplishments.
A new ‘manufacturing caucus’ looks to explore what companies need in terms of employees, education, training, and business opportunities — and help make sure they get it
Although not as dominant an industry as it was several decades ago, manufacturing is still a major part of the New Jersey economy, and a sector where a majority of employers have indicated they’re still looking to hire.
To help foster what could be a manufacturing renaissance in New Jersey — a state with a rich industrial history that dates to colonial days — state lawmakers are launching a new “manufacturing caucus” that will focus specifically on figuring out ways to craft policies that lead to increased productivity and growth for manufacturing.
The formation of the new caucus, which will involve lawmakers from both the Assembly and Senate, and from both political parties, was announced last week by Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester). The panel will hold a series of hearings this summer to help inform a legislative agenda that will be pursued in the fall as lawmakers return to the State House following this year’s legislative elections. The effort will be led by state Sen. Robert Gordon, whose own background includes working in his family’s yarn mill in Paterson.
“I think (manufacturing) is critically important to the state,” said Gordon (D-Bergen) in an interview with NJ Spotlight. “Manufacturing is still a very important component of our economy.”
The sun is shining the birds are chirping and the class of 2017 is about to graduate, which means going out and looking for a job.
According to Kim Barberich, executive director of the Rider University Career Development & Success Department, this year’s job outlook for new graduates is looking better than last year.
“The landscape looks like there’s going to be, for 2017, about a 6 percent increase in hiring, I think that’s really exciting,” she said.
Dora Onyschak, the New Jersey metro market manager and vice president at Robert Half, a staffing and employment agency, said 74 percent of employers are hiring new grads this year.
The top degrees that employers are looking for are business, engineering and communication technologies.
Barberich adds that “healthcare is also a really strong domain right now, especially because New Jersey has so many pharmaceutical companies.”
Even though he has spent much of his career writing songs about the working man, Bruce Springsteen will be the first to tell you he hasn’t done much in the way of hard work himself.
As part of the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival, the Boss sat down with actor Tom Hanks for a conversation about his life and music. “The only honest work I’ve ever done in my entire life was at 14 or 15 when I was a lawn boy,” he told the crowd at the Beacon Theatre. “I painted houses and tarred roofs in the summertime – that was to get the money to buy my first guitar.”
But the fans still love him all the same, and over the course of the hour, Hanks attempted to get to the bottom of that long-held affection. Here are some the highlights from their discussion.
Does the fall-off in solar installations and loss of jobs indicate a slowdown in the sector?
What’s going on: Mostly business as usual: The unanswered question is whether that portends well for New Jersey’s solar sector, which has been prone to boom-and-bust cycles. The state’s solar industry is continuing to install new systems at a fairly good pace, although last month the number of deployments fell off dramatically from the rate of a year ago. In March, 889 residential systems were put in, roughly half the number installed 12 months earlier, according to the Office of Clean Energy. The number of nonresidential systems put also fell. That is only one month’s tally, but there are other signs the sector may be slowing. An industry survey of the sector nationwide released early this year found New Jersey lost 1,000 solar jobs in 2016 — at the same time the industry was growing at 25 percent nationwide.
Millenials watch a video calling on the millennial generation to help end the problem of extreme poverty around the globe at the IMF/World Bank Group’s Spring summit on April 10, 2014. Miguel Juarez Lugo / Zuma Press file
By his twenties, Kyle Kaylor imagined he would be living on his own, nearing a college degree, and on his way to a job that fulfilled him.
Instead, at 21, he found himself out of school, living with his parents, and “stuck” working as a manager at a fast food restaurant scraping to make hand-to-mouth.
Launching into adulthood has been tricky, he said.
“It became too difficult financially to be in school and not working,” says Kaylor, who dropped out of Lincoln Christian University, in Illinois, after one semester because of a money crunch. “And without schooling, you can’t get a job that you can survive on, so I had to move back home,” he said.
Millions of Americans don’t want to work part-time.
The U.S. economy added just 98,000 jobs in March, the smallest gain in nearly a year, after adding more than 200,000 jobs in January and February. Economists predicted that the number of jobs created in March would hit 180,000, so the actual figures fell far short of that. Unemployment fell to a 10-year-low of 4.5% in March from 4.7% in February, but the “real” unemployment rate that includes part-time workers who would rather work full-time and job hunters who gave up searching for work was 8.9%, although this was also down from 9.2% in February.
Part-time work is still a contentious alternative for many workers. On Thursday, Amazon said it will create 30,000 part-time jobs in the U.S. over the next year, nearly double the current number. Of those, 25,000 will be in warehouses and 5,000 will be home-based customer service positions. Amazon AMZN, -0.38% said in January it would create 100,000 full-time jobs over the next 18 months, according to a separate announcement made in January. Last year, Amazon’s world-wide workforce grew by 48% to 341,400 employees. In the U.S., it has over 70 “fulfillment centers” and 90,000 full-time employees. (Amazon did not respond to request for comment.)
There were some 5.6 million involuntary part-time workers in March 2017, little changed from the month before, but down from 6.4 million a year earlier, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That number is up from 4.5 million in November 2007, but way off a peak of 8.6 million in September 2012. These figures are almost entirely due to the inability of workers to find full-time jobs, leaving many workers to take or keep lower-paying jobs, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit think-tank in Washington, D.C. And 54% of the growth in these involuntary part-time jobs between 2007 and 2015 were in retail, leisure and hospitality industries, the EPI said.
Ridgewood NJ, Small business owners probably think they have enough headaches already, what with meeting payroll, dealing with government regulations and pleasing customers.
Setting up a retirement plan for their employees is just extra red tape – and possibly expense – they can do without.
But creating such a plan is more doable than they may realize and even comes with benefits for the small business and its owner, says Andrew Denney, founder and CEO of Prosperity Financial Group (www.pfgmidwest.com).
“I’ve worked with some employee retirement plans where there was in excess of $500 million in the plan,” Denney says. “At the other end, I’ve seen businesses with as few as 10 employees set up a plan.”
Yet as a group, small businesses tend to forgo retirement plans.
For example, only 22 percent of workers at firms with fewer than 10 employees report having access to a workplace savings plan or pension, compared with 74 percent at firms with 500 or more, according to a Pew Charitable Trusts report.
Employee-sponsored 401(k) and IRA plans are among the more popular options for businesses that do offer a retirement benefit. Those savings plans allow the employees to deposit money routinely in the accounts with a deduction taken out of their paychecks.
Since these are tax-deferred retirement plans, the employees see a lower income-tax bill at the end of the year. Some employers also offer a company match, providing an even heftier balance to the accounts.
But employees aren’t the only ones who benefit. Denney says there’s also an upside for the small business owner, including:
• Employee recruiting and retention. Any business wants to hang onto good employees and offering a retirement plan helps do that. They’ll be happier knowing they’re more likely to have some financial security in retirement. A retirement benefit also serves as a recruiting tool. Imagine a job candidate who’s weighing similar offers from two businesses, but one has a retirement plan and the other doesn’t. “It separates you from the pack,” Denney says. • A lower tax bill. The business potentially can reduce its tax burden because a company’s contributions to the retirement plan are tax deductible. In some cases, the businesses also may qualify for a tax credit to help offset the cost of starting the plan, according to the IRS. • An opportunity to invest in your own retirement. Like their employees, small business owners may not want to work forever and need to set aside money for their own retirements. They’ll enjoy the same tax-deferred benefits the employees do as they build that nest egg.
“It’s worthwhile for a small business owner to investigate whether an employee retirement plan is more attainable than they might realize,” Denney says. “A financial professional with experience in setting up such plans can explain to them the advantages and disadvantages, and suggest which plan would work best for their situation.”
About Andrew Denney
Andrew Denney, founder and CEO of Prosperity Financial Group (www.pfgmidwest.com), has more than 13 years’ experience in the finance industry, where he advises clients in such areas as retirement planning, asset protection, estate planning and wealth management. Denney holds Series 7 and Series 66 securities registrations with LPL Financial, in addition to a life insurance license. He has a degree in finance from Missouri State University.
Securities offered through LPL Financial member FINRA and SIPC
Investment advisory services offered through Independent Financial Partners, a Registered Investment Adviser
Independent Financial Partners and LPL are separate entities
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, There’s a new generation in town and it’s one that employers better get ready for, because it’s 23 million strong and will be flooding the workforce by the end of the decade.
Ladies and gentlemen, meet Generation Z; a confidence-filled group that doesn’t want to miss a thing, has the shortest attention span of any generation and isn’t quite as open as its predecessors – the millennials – from whom they learned that not everything needs to be shared online.
“If you try to treat those in Generation Z (born in the mid to late ‘90s, mostly to Generation X parents) like you treated Millennials (born in the early ‘80s to mid ‘90s, mostly to Baby Boomer parents), it will backfire on you,” says Matt Stewart, co-founder of College Works Painting (www.collegeworks.com). “This generation is unique. And now they are starting to enter the workforce.”
Thanks to his role at College Works Painting, which offers internships that help undergraduate students gain real-life business management experience, Stewart has gained a first-hand look at both the Millennials and Generation Z. And there certainly are differences between the two:
• According to best selling author and generations expert David Stillman, you won’t find those in Generation Z frequenting Facebook or Twitter as much as their predecessors. Keenly aware of software monitoring, they are more likely to share their worlds on apps such as Snapchat or Instagram. Often dubbed Digital Natives, Millennials are much more likely to share their lives in the open on platforms such as Facebook.
• Being culturally connected is more important to those in Generation Z than to Millennials, with many more Gen Zers suffering from FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) than Millennials.
• Stewart doesn’t see this as a hard and fast rule and says the experience Generation Z employees have at College Works Painting – and the impact they pride themselves on having – is much the opposite of FOMO. An example that Stewart says other companies can follow.
• Those in Generation Z have grown up with smart phones, tablets, 3-D, 4-D and 360-degree photography just to name a few of their norms. According to Stillman, keeping the attention of a Gen Zer is harder than ever. Their average attention span is eight seconds, compared to the 12-second attention span of Millennials.
• Millennials are driven to succeed by helicopter parents who watch their every move, while Generation Z finds encouragement from parents who encourage independent thinking, want them to achieve on their own and are fed up with not receiving equal pay for equal success at work.
• According to Forbes, social entrepreneurship is important to Generation Z, a group that is driven to volunteer and choose a career in which they can make a difference. On the other hand, there are those who hope the Millennials will become more civic-minded as they grow older, but it’s something that hasn’t been witnessed as of yet.
• Generation Z children were raised in classrooms that focused on diversity and collaboration. Despite this fact, they tend to be more private than Millennials, perhaps as a result of seeing many of the downfalls of previous generations in the Great Recession.
• Because those who are part of Generation Z feel pressure to gain corporate experience early, they are competing with Millennials who are more likely to wait to gain that same type of experience. The good news for Millennials, who are more likely to chase jobs in the corporate world, is that 72 percent of those in Generation Z wish to take what they learn and apply it to their own business, versus 64 percent of Millennials who have the same goal.
About Matt Stewart
Matt Stewart is co-founder of College Works Painting (www.collegeworks.com), which provides real-world business experience for thousands of college students each year. The award-winning program also offers high-quality house-painting services for homeowners.
The approach of Memorial Day means it’s summer jobs season at the New Jersey shore.
OCEAN CITY, N.J. (AP) — With Memorial Day soon approaching, it’s summer jobs season at the New Jersey shore.
Business owners tell The Philadelphia Inquirer (https://bit.ly/2oNZd6i) fewer international students have been applying for the seasonal positions in recent years, opening the door for more locals to get in on the action.
Businesses in Ocean City such as Gillian’s Wonderland Pier and numerous eateries hire hundreds of workers between the ages of 14 and 21 to start around mid-June. Most get paid a little more than minimum wage.
Above all, the business owners say, intelligence and an outgoing attitude is a must.
John Kavchok, personnel director for the Wonderland Pier, said most summer employees work six days a week and start at $8.50 an hour. Among the fringe benefits are a 25 percent discount on pizza and free rides.
Speaking of rides — ride operators must be 16 or older under state law, and Kavchok said the pier chooses employees for those jobs who are responsible and attentive.
