Atlantic City’s mounting job losses are holding back a painfully slow economic recovery for New Jersey as a whole, a Rutgers economist said in a study released Tuesday.
Nancy Mantell, director of the Rutgers Economic Advisory Service, or R/ECON, said the four casinos that have already closed this year — and a fifth threatening to — are major factors contributing to the state’s worst job growth since 2011.
“What is key here is that New Jersey has been so underperforming the nation,” Mantell said during a twice-a-year conference in New Brunswick for R/ECON subscribers. “The jobs recovery is a non-event.”