Platform Update

November 2009

ACTION ITEMS

Platform Meeting Reminder: The Chamber will host a meeting of the Platform Economic Development Coalition on November 10 from 10 a.m. to noon at the Chamber office in Trenton to provide a briefing on our platform agenda. If you plan to attend and have not yet responded, please e-mail me at Maryellen@njchamber.com.

Legislative Agenda: As previously noted, the Chamber is formulating a list of key policy and legislative initiatives that we will promote when the Legislature returns later this month. We are in the process of finalizing our agenda, and we would appreciate your thoughts on economic development priorities.

New Analysis of Employment Growth: Rutgers economists Jim Hughes and Joe Seneca recently released a report on the 2007-2009 recession and its impact on future employment growth. Below are highlights of this report, which was sponsored by Advance Realty.

• The U.S. lost more than 7 million private sector jobs between December 2007 and August 2009, the worst employment loss since the Great Depression. This is also the first time since the depression that the nation will end the decade with fewer jobs than at the start of the decade, with a loss of an estimated 1.7 million private sector jobs.
• The nation faces a significant employment deficit in the post-recession era, exacerbated by a continued increase in the number of people joining the job market. The labor force is projected to grow by 1.3 million per year between 2006 and 2016, and this increase means that the nation needs to create an estimated 920,000 private sector jobs per year.
• Given estimates of further job losses and the growing labor force, the private sector employment deficit could total 9.4 million by December 2009.
• Eliminating the deficit would require significant and sustained job growth. The nation would have to add 2.15 million private sector jobs per year for more than seven straight years (January 2010 to August 2017) to eliminate the employment deficit.
• The post-recession period will provide an opportunity for New Jersey to become more competitive as some former economic powerhouse states struggle to come out of the recession.
  

Click here for the previous update.

MaryEllen Peppard
Government Relations Manager
New Jersey Chamber of Commerce
216 West State Street
Trenton, NJ 08608
Phone: (609)989-7888 Ext. 125
Fax: (609)989-9696
Maryellen.Peppard@njchamber.com