The New Jersey State Policy Lab is publishing our first report, Vacant Commercial Property in New Jersey: Causes and Solutions, written by Michael Hayes and Pengju Zhang. The economic recession caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in an increase in vacant [...]
by Tia Azzi and Michael Lahr, R/Econ™ The latest report from R/Econ™ examines the migration trends across counties within New Jersey between 2018 and 2019. This report uses Internal Revenue Service (IRS) data, rather than that from than the U.S. Census, to report migration by county. This analysis divides New Jersey into five regions to [...]
By Michael L. Lahr, Director of Rutgers Economic Research Service (R/ECON™) What is the status of New Jersey housing markets? The bottom line has been more or less the same since June 2020: double-digit price growth prompted by low inventory and depressed interest rates. Have they peaked? That is a tougher call. For sure, the [...]
November 30, 2021 Maia de la Calle, Rutgers Economic Advisory Service (R/ECON™) In the past few weeks, discussions on the “Great Resignation” and labor shortages have permeated news cycles. These phenomena, characterized by (1) record-high levels of voluntary resignations and (2) job openings surpassing the number of unemployed workers, are being described as major [...]
Michael L. Lahr, R/ECONTM November 15, 2021 Inflation has found its way to the front pages of newspapers for the first time in decades. From New Jersey’s perspective though, national reports of inflation are greater than those for New Jersey. From September 2020 to September 2021, core prices[1] increased by 4.0% nationwide but by just [...]
Maia de la Calle & Michael L. Lahr, Rutgers Economic Advisory Service (R/ECON™) As national media coverage focuses on the pandemic’s impact on individual states’ economies, New Jersey, one of the COVID-19 hotspot states at the early height of the outbreak, has been hit particularly hard. As of August 2021, New Jersey was tied [...]
Michael L. Lahr, Rutgers Economic Advisory Service (R/ECON™) In a state such as New Jersey, where the cost of living is about a third more than the national average, childcare costs are largely out of reach for many families who rely on childcare in order to join the workforce. Research from Rutgers University’s National [...]
Amal Muse Every decade, across the United States, the federal government collects comprehensive data on every individual based on basic population characteristics including age, sex, marital status, household composition, family characteristics, and household size. This data collection effort, the U.S. Census, helps determine how hundreds of billions of dollars in federal funding, including grants [...]
Jennifer Spiegel & Michael Lahr, Rutgers Economic Advisory Service (R/ECON™) The short-term prospects for the state’s economy remain quite exuberant. This is despite the arrival of the delta variant of COVID-19 in July 2021, which forced the national economy to down shift just as it seemed the pandemic was waning. Still, economic fundamentals remain [...]
Jennifer Spiegel The COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting economic downturn has brought about record job losses and the highest number of new unemployment claims since 1982. In mid-March 2020, new unemployment claims nationwide totaled 6.6 million and remained at over 1 million new claims each week for over a year. The U.S. Department of [...]
