NEW Jersey’s economy is in rotten shape. But if you want a more pre cise measurement, don’t trust the state’s unemployment figures.
With Gov. Jon Corzine in a tight race against Republican Chris Christie, Corzine’s staff is pushing state workers hard to produce good news. A memo revealed this week shows the governor’s deputy chief of staff, Mark Matzen, directing Cabinet members to “come up with an event or two or three that show job creation or economic development in the private sector.” Matzen said the events would “get the message out” and added, “I know this is a stretch for some of you, but please be creative.”
Just how much are state employees willing to “stretch” to help out the boss? Just how “creative” does Corzine want them to be? If the overall number is to be believed, the Garden State’s unemployment rate is 9.8 percent, as bad as the national average. But how reliable are these data? Are any numbers being tweaked or massaged to reflect the preferences of the governor’s re-election campaign?
Consider this: When he presents his monthly job report, state Labor Commissioner David J. Socolow usually offers some assessment of what’s driving the state’s economy, in language that sounds awfully similar to what you’d expect to hear from Corzine’s campaign.
For example, August’s press release said, “New Jersey’s private-sector employment is trending in the right direction. Gov. Corzine’s economic-recovery initiatives are fostering job creation, and the nation’s recovery program is helping to restore economic confidence. As a result, New Jersey has laid the groundwork for a recovery marked by stronger job growth when the global recession ends.”
Socolow’s good news was that the state had gained 5,900 jobs in July, with layoffs in the public sector but more than offset by the creation of 13,000 new jobs in the private sector.
That’s a great number for the state in ordinary circumstances but phenomenal during a recession, and in a month when the nation as a whole was still losing jobs.
But a funny thing happened in the next month’s release: The numbers for July were revised downward considerably. In fact, 7,400 of those new private-sector jobs were illusory — with the net result that, instead of gaining jobs, the state had lost 500.
Yet Corzine’s campaign used July’s early numbers to justify commercials that his economic recovery plan was “beginning to work with thousands of new private sector jobs, bucking the national trend.”
Now, no individual revision should raise eyebrows; every economist is entitled to change his conclusions based on a fuller set of data. But the July revision was only the most glaring example of the state’s initially touting new jobs that never existed.
The state’s estimates of how many residents were employed in the private sector were revised down in the months of April, May, June, July and August. Sometimes the revision was just a few hundred downward, sometimes a few thousand, but it was always in the same direction.
That is, month after month, the state has been issuing glowing job numbers that it later quietly has had to deflate. Figures that looked much better turn out to be only a little better, and figures that looked a little worse are revealed to be much worse.
Normally, revisions would be upward in some months, downward in others. Look at the employment numbers for Jersey’s neighbors, New York and Pennsylvania, in the same months, and you’ll see that exact pattern — the revised data offer a brighter picture some months, a darker outlook others. (And credit those state agencies for offering their updates in a Joe Friday, just-the-facts tone, with no cheerleading for the incumbent governors.)
Corruption in New Jersey has become a dog-bites-man story. But if even economic data are subject to political manipulation, it’s sunk to a new low. Perhaps New Jerseyans don’t really have a state government anymore — just a giant, taxpayer-funded Corzine re-election effort.
Jim Geraghty writes the Campaign Spot for National Review Online.