Nearly 100 New Jersey companies announced more than 13,300 layoffs combined in 2024, public records show, as white-collar sectors such as pharmaceuticals, banking and finance tightened job counts.
The numbers are made public through New Jersey’s Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification filings, or WARN notices, which mandate that employers provide a 90-day notice when they are letting employees in the state go.
Not all 13,332 people were necessarily out of a job. For example, a layoff notice was filed for 157 people from the Metropolitan YMCA in Wayne, but many of those workers were rehired.
Meanwhile, Big Lots said late in December that it was handing 385 workers the pink slip, but then announced a last-minute deal to keep 400 of its stores open.
All told, New Jersey has the 10th-highest unemployment rate in the nation, at 4.6%, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.
‘This is really a correction’
Many of the layoffs were likely among hires that came on board in 2022 and 2023, during what’s been called the Great Resignation, said James Hughes, an economist at Rutgers University.
That primarily included information jobs, as well as banking, finance and pharmaceuticals.
“The Great Resignation has yielded to the Great Stay,” he said in an interview. “It could definitely be shrinking … which suggests this is really a correction.”
According to a survey of business owners released in December, 55% of employers had trouble finding staff in 2024, down from 73% in 2021 during the Great Resignation, when many people quit work amid the COVID-19 pandemic.