GSI Analysis: May ’25 Jobs Report – New Jersey Labor Market Flat-Lines in May

• Unemployment rate at 4.8% for second straight month; resident employment and labor force decline.
• Number of jobs unchanged, after downward revision to April.

New Jersey’s job report for May shows very little change from recent months. The unemployment rate remained at 4.8%, with the resident employment count down 6,220 from April offset by a 4,444 drop in the labor force. Both employment and the labor force were lower than a year earlier.

The number of payroll jobs in May is estimated to have been unchanged from April. However, the April figure was revised down 3,800—the figures now show an increase of just 1,000 for that month. Indeed, there has been essentially no change in jobs since last December (there was an odd large drop in public employment in January, followed by a rebound there in February). New Jersey’s May showing is weaker than New York, which added 5,100 jobs in May, and whose unemployment rate dropped from 4.2% to 4.0%. New York, like New Jersey, did see a cut in its April job count.

In the industry details, jobs were lost in May in construction, trade, transportation, and utilities, education and health services, and the public sector. Leisure and hospitality had a large 4,200 increase, with other sectors generally saw modest gains.

The very small movement in our labor numbers is comparable to a lot of national data. The expectations are that tariffs and heightened general economic uncertainty are likely to spur weakness and higher prices, but as yet, aside from the surge in imports earlier this year, nothing notable has as of yet shown up in the reports.