When Chris Christie ran for governor against incumbent Jon Corzine in 2009, one of the charges he kept making was that the state’s economy was in the toilet because of the Democratic governor. The state’s unemployment rate was higher than the nation’s — it was — and that was a direct result of the policy choices made by Corzine.
He wasn’t wrong — or entirely correct. New Jersey lost a lot of financial-industry jobs in the 2008 crash — not Corzine’s fault — after having been mired in a slump since before Corzine took office (a slump he did little to fix).
As far as Christie was concerned, the fault was Corzine’s and he would do better.
Christie, in an interview after a visit to a retirement community in Toms River, said he understood Corzine’s logic, but dismissed it given the state’s unemployment rate was up, and continues to stand at a 32-year high.
“Look, unemployment is up again this month,” Christie said. “I don’t know how when unemployment continues to go up that you can say that’s a success. That shows the low standards the governor has set for economic success in the state.” The campaign machinery also went to work on the issue, sending out competing statements.
“Jon Corzine’s record on job creation is abysmal,” said state Sen. Joseph Kryillos (R-Monmouth), Christie’s campaign chairman. “New Jersey’s economy was in decline long before the national recession took hold. Our unemployment rate remains higher than that of any neighboring state’s.”
So, what to make of the latest job news?
As reported by New Jersey Policy Perspective:
New Jersey lost 8,600 jobs in March and the state’s stubbornly high unemployment rate held steady at 9.0 percent, according to numbers released Thursday by the Department of Labor and Workforce Development. It was one of only eight states in the country to lose jobs in March, and the drop of 8,600 was the second-largest decline next to Ohio, which lost 9,500 jobs, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Not exactly good news.
Meanwhile, unlike many other states, New Jersey’s unemployment rate can’t seem to fall back under 9 percent, a point it has been at or above since June 2009. The Garden State’s unemployment rate is now the sixth highest of all the states, and it is much higher than our neighbors in New York (8.5 percent), Connecticut (7.7 percent) and Pennsylvania (7.5 percent).
New Jersey’s rate remains well above than the national average, which was 8.2 percent in March. It has also dropped much less the national rate, having fallen by just 0.3 percent since March 2011, compared to a decrease of 0.7 percent for the U.S. as a whole.
I’m not blaming Christie. On the contrary, New Jersey was deep in this mess before he took office. At the same time, his efforts have not done a whole lot to reverse the course we have been — as the chart shows New Jersey has tracked behind the national figures, so it seems pretty clear that we have ridden whatever modest national growth had existed and are far from leading any kind of national recovery.
My point here is two-fold: Christie loves to pass around blame, and politicians have a terrible habit of overstating the impact that they can have on any economy.
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