NEWARK-The very slow recovery will continue for both New Jersey and the United States, with some rough patches along the way. But just wait until 2013, when we should see improvement, said speakers at Jones Lang LaSalle’s 2011 Northern New Jersey Market Outlook, held at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center here.
The speakers told a tale of two states, with New Jersey’s cheerleader in chief, Gov. Chris Christie, trumpeting the business successes of the last year, with an economist later predicting a rough year to come.
“More jobs are staying in New Jersey, good high-tech, high-paying jobs,” said Christie, who kicked off the conference citing the reduction of business regulations and deals with companies including Panasonic, Honeywell, BASF and Bayer under his administration.
Some 45,000 private sector jobs have been created in the last 20 months, he noted, and “more people are calling us to come to New Jersey than us calling them. “We will have more announcements in the next couple of months,” Christie said.
Those announcements are needed, as the state will see the effects of Wall Street layoffs, and possible reduced exports to a recessionary Europe. “We’re going to see rough going for the next year,” said Marisa Di Natale, a Moody’s economist. “There are a lot of risks, and they’re especially acute in New York and New Jersey.”
More than 44 months into the recovery, New Jersey’s employment levels are still 6% below their peak, she said. Financial services jobs in Hudson, Bergen and Passaic Counties have dropped by 3,000 in the last three months, and Wall Street layoffs will continue through the third quarter of next year.
A recession in Europe also will affect national exports, a sector to which New Jersey is highly exposed, Di Natale said. “But exports make up less than 7% of the nation’s GDP,” she observed.
Nationally, refinancing of debt incurred during the boom will be focus through 2015, said Colin Dyer, president and CEO of Jones Lang LaSalle. “We have not had a strong tail wind behind us for quite some time,” added Peter Roberts, CEO of Jones Lang LaSalle Americas.
Unemployment remains high and should portend a decrease in consumer spending. “But the rate isn’t the same for everyone,” Roberts noted. “For those over 25 with a college degree it’s less than 4%.”
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