Good news is hard to find in the job market lately. The list of New Jersey firms dispensing pink slips by the dozens includes Big Pharma, as well as big finance and big retailers. And many workers in all kinds of jobs — from construction to manufacturing and fintech — are closely “hugging” their jobs, as the statistics worsen.
Challenger, Grey & Christmas — a firm that collects labor market data — found that from January through July, New Jersey companies reported cutting about 26,700 jobs. Compare that to about 5,800 during all of the previous year.
New Jersey also created jobs, but the state’s unemployment rate still rose from 4.6% in February to 4.9% in July. That’s higher than the national rate. Experts focused on the state’s job market use words like “stalled,” “stagnant” and “weak.”
The job market so far this year in New Jersey has been “a mixed bag — overall, relatively weak,” said Will Irving with the Rutgers University New Jersey State Policy Lab. “We are through July down about 7,800 jobs, net, and that reflects losses in both a number of private-sector industries and public sector, state government in particular.”
Businesses on a rollercoaster
Businesses hate instability and New Jersey companies fear spikes in energy costs, Siekerka added.
And while President Donald Trump’s volatile tariff policies caused some companies to rush-order inventory as a hedge against higher import taxes, the tariffs certainly did not inspire a hiring boom, at least not yet, said Irving.
“We’ve seen such a significant sort of rollercoaster in different tariff announcements and changes affecting different countries as well as different industries that it can have a stultifying effect on investment decisions certainly,” he noted.
NJ Spotlight News, September 15, 2025