GSI Analysis: August ’24 Jobs Report – New Jersey’s Labor Market Slide Continued in August

• State shed jobs for a third month in a row; longest slump in many years.
• Some gains in residents at work and in the labor force, but the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.8%.

On September 19th, New Jersey’s Department of Labor and Workforce Development issued the Monthly Jobs Report for September 2024. Dr. Charles Steindel, former Chief Economist of the State of New Jersey, analyzed the report for the Garden State Initiative:

The run of bad news for New Jersey’s labor market continues. The unemployment rate moved up from 4.7% in July to 4.8% in August, though the numbers of residents employed and the labor force both moved up, in each case this was the third straight gain after a period of weakness. New Jersey’s unemployment rate has fluctuated between 4.6% and 4.8% for the last 13 months.

The job news was worse. The state shed another 4,400 jobs in August, and July’s sharp drop was revised up to now show a loss of 11,500. New Jersey has lost jobs for the last three months. This is the longest slump since 2010 (surprisingly, the pandemic loss period in early 2020 only lasted two months, though of course was extraordinarily large). The number of jobs in the state in August was only 3,100 larger than last December.

August job losses were widespread by sector, with only manufacturing, finance, and education and health seeing noticeable increases. The public sector lost 2,000, and professional and business services was down 2,700.

Job growth has ebbed around the nation in recent months, but clearly the slowdown in New Jersey has been larger than most. The Federal Reserve’s rate cut will not propel any discernable improvement for some time (and it would need to continue). It’s possible, of course, that some of the recent weakness reflects the vagaries of seasonal hiring and layoffs, which could lead to some technical improvement in the fall, but at the moment the numbers are far from promising. There may also be unfavorable regional trends now at work: New York state lost jobs in August, and its unemployment rate ticked up.

There has been some discussion of the recent announcement by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics that the national job count is currently overstated by more than 800,000. This will be reflected in downward revisions in January. It’s not yet clear what this would mean to New Jersey. State job figures will be adjusted to June 2024 unemployment insurance counts; these are not yet available. The national adjustment will be based on the March 2024 unemployment insurance data.