The Bergen Record

NJ loses jobs as unemployme­nt rate hovers at 4.8%

- Daniel Munoz NorthJerse­y.com USA TODAY NETWORK – NEW JERSEY

New Jersey’s economy posted a loss for the first time in six months, the state Department of Labor and Workforce Developmen­t said Thursday, after the labor market showed signs of slowing last year.

The New Jersey jobless rate in February hovered at 4.8%, where it’s been since September, the latest data shows. That makes it the fourth-highest unemployme­nt rate in the nation, and above the national rate of 3.9%.

All told, the state lost 34,000 jobs between February 2023 and 2024, state data shows. Higher-paying sectors such as finance, profession­al services (accounting, architectu­re, legal work, technology) and telecommun­ications slowed hiring in the past year.

“Certainly, growth has slowed, really in the second half of the year,” said James Hughes, an economist at Rutgers University.

Those higher-paying sectors — white-collar jobs — became saturated after having a “hard time filling their open positions” coming out of the pandemic, Hughes said.

“They’re filled now and they’re holding on to the people they have, but they’re not adding new people,” he said.

Lower-paying sectors such as leisure and hospitalit­y, which were hit harder during the pandemic, continued their hiring surges last year. Health care is expected to grow as the baby boomer population ages and becomes one of the sector’s biggest consumers, Hughes said.

Figures show that leisure and hospitalit­y, which includes restaurant­s, only just hit pre-pandemic staffing levels in January this year. Those establishm­ents were pummeled by months of pandemic-related closures and reduced-capacity restrictio­ns.

The monthly jobs report is made up of a survey of employers to measure the number of jobs and a survey of households to measure the unemployme­nt rate. The two sets of data don’t always move in the same direction.

Since the pandemic, New Jersey’s job market has witnessed surging housing prices, the transition away from the office and toward remote work, an explosion of e-commerce and warehousin­g, and the highest inflation in 40 years.

“You’ve got expenses, you got insurance, you’ve got employees, you’ve got raw materials, you’ve got fuel,” said Vincent Vicari, who heads the Bergen County office of the New Jersey Small Business Developmen­t Center at Ramapo College of New Jersey in Mahwah. “Each one of those things help to erode confidence” among business owners.

The number of people who said they were unemployed rose by nearly 75,000, while the unemployme­nt rate rose from 3.3% to 4.8%. That number shrank by just 400 between December and February.

Some of New Jersey’s corporate gi

ants cut jobs last year. Bed Bath & Beyond, based in Union, filed for bankruptcy, closed stores and laid off more than 1,300 workers statewide. Prudential Financial laid off 46 workers in Newark, and Audible said this January that it was laying off 62 workers in the same city.

Health care companies like Bristol Myers Squibb, Novartis and Becton Dickinson and Co. laid off dozens more, according to filings with the state Labor Department.

This year, many similar cuts could continue, suggested Kevin Kim, the founding chief executive officer of the Palisades Park advertisin­g firm Marz Agency.

In his own sector, many clients have cut their advertisin­g budgets by as much as half.

But will the economy do well?

Possibly. On Wednesday, the Federal

Reserve kept interest rates the same but said upward of three cuts could be coming this year, after 11 rate hikes since the pandemic.

Christophe­r Maher, chairman and chief executive officer of OceanFirst Financial Corp., based in Toms River, said in an interview last year with Gannett affiliate the Asbury Park Press that he expected the bank would increase its lending this year amid falling interest rates.

“We’re looking forward to 2024, and we think you’re going to see a resilient economy,” Maher said.

A survey by the New Jersey Business and Industry Associatio­n, a business lobbying group, found that 28% of employers predicted more hiring in 2024, 7% predicted less hiring, and 66% predicted it would stay the same.

By comparison, 23% increased hiring and 18% decreased hiring in 2023, the survey found.

Kim, the Marz executive, felt differentl­y about this year.

“Businesses of all sizes are going to take a careful look at their balance sheets and try to cut as much as possible,” he said.

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