The Garden State has added jobs at a faster rate than the country since the beginning of the pandemic while the rest of the region has sputtered.
At the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, people, jobs and economic activity moved outward from New York City into the suburbs, exurbs and points beyond. Since then, going by the jobs data, the region has been experiencing a different kind of shift — toward New Jersey.
Nonfarm payroll employment was 8,000 higher in June in the New York-Newark-Jersey City metropolitan area than in February 2020 after adjusting for seasonality. That’s an increase of less than 0.1% — effectively no change — during a period when employment rose 2.5% nationwide. In New York City, employment is still down by 20,600, or 0.4%, so all the gains have been in the suburbs. But the suburbs in New York state appear to have done even worse than the city, meaning almost all the job growth has been in New Jersey.
