NJ Loses 16K Jobs, Yet Unemployment Drops A Notch
TRENTON (CBS) - New Jersey lost about 16,000 jobs last month yet saw its unemployment rate drop a tenth of a point. What's going on?
A lot of people just stopped looking for work, according to New Jersey Labor Department Commissioner Harold Wirths.
"They may be choosing to retire, maybe choosing to stay home with their children," he says. "It's a lot of different reasons."
Besides, he says the monthly numbers can be volatile. Consider the state gained 12,000 jobs in November. The real important numbers come out in March, when the entire year is taken into account.
Preliminary indications on that front show a total job loss for 2010 at just over 31,000, which is nothing compared to 2009 when 114,000 thousand jobs went away. The state's 9.1% unemplyment rate is below the national average of 9.4.
Reported by David Madden, KYW Newsradio
