TRENTON-“The trending is unfortunate,” said Cushman & Wakefield’s Gualberto “Gil” Medina, reacting to news at Wednesday’s RealShare conference about the state’s economic outlook being downgraded to negative by Standard & Poor’s. But it was only Wednesday.
On Thursday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported preliminary statistics showing the state’s unemployment rate had inched upward again, climbing to 9.9 % in August. That is within a whisper of the last peak set in 1977, which many CRE veterans remember as precipitating terrible times for the market in the early 1980s.
On Tuesday, there had been a daunting report about the housing market that cited new Mortgage Bankers Association figures showing New Jersey has moved up to second place in the country (after Florida) in the rate of homeowners with delinquent loans – and noting that home prices fell by 0.8 % in July, while rising in 42 other states.
That same day, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank in New York talked to the Morris County Chamber of Commerce about the state’s economic recovery lagging the nations.
Medina, who was the state’s Commerce Secretary in the late 1990s under Republican Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, speculated at the RealShare conference that state officials may need to consider additional programs to stimulate the economy and bolster the commercial real estate market – especially the office market, which has been seriously sagging for several years.
Still, Thursday’s bad news was flatly termed “inaccurate” by a top economist in Gov. Chris Christie’s administration. Charles Steindel told reporters in a conference call that the new jobless statistics are inconsistent with labor department data that shows the state adding 5,300 jobs in August.
Steindel said he has complained to federal statisticians, and know that other states had similar concerns.
Dudley, the Federal Reserve Bank president, also noted that jobs have been gradually regained since the recession. However, he said it was only about 25 % of the quarter million jobs lost – and said that was “of course much weaker than I would like to see.”
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