Deep Dive: A look at unemployment impacts, economic recovery in New Jersey

In this week's Deep Dive, News 12's Kristie Reeter and Caleb Silver with Investopedia take a look at the unemployment impacts and economic recovery in the Garden State.

News 12 Staff

Oct 29, 2021, 11:16 AM

Updated 1,078 days ago

Share:

In this week's Deep Dive, News 12's Kristie Reeter and Caleb Silver with Investopedia take a look at the unemployment impacts and economic recovery in the Garden State.
In a poll taken by News 12, viewers were asked: Did you change jobs during the pandemic?
A majority at 78% said no, but 21% said yes.
A look at the latest unemployment figures for New Jersey paints an interesting picture of the economic recovery in the state.
"We are still looking at August for New Jersey, a little slow to report its September results but it was 7.1%, that's higher than the national average of 4.8%," Silver says. "We have a varying degree of recovery across the counties we track in New Jersey. If you look in Hudson County, high unemployment there, 7.3%, Bergen County, 6.6%, Monmouth County, 5.9%, Morris County fairing the best at 5.3%. So, it is kind of mixed when you look across the Garden State."
MORE: Deep Dive
But what are the sectors that are showing the most strength, especially as New Jersey heads into the end of the year and there is talk about inflation and supply chain issues?
"It is leisure and hospitality and that's where the steepest job losses were amid the pandemic in 2020 and the early part of 2021," Silver explains. "You are seeing steep job growth in restaurants, in hotels, in bars, up about 9.6%. But the fastest growing sector in New Jersey is government jobs, which is hiring folks at an aggressive rate. There were a lot of job losses in that sector. We are seeing some hiring there finally."