Abstract
Changing national economic forces in 2007 produced a number of surprising regional employment growth patterns. Record Wall Street profits boosted the Northeast region in general, and New York in particular, into one of its best relative economic performances in decades. At the same time, the transformation of a booming housing market into a painful bust resulted in erstwhile high-employment-growth states such as Arizona, California, and Florida experiencing actual job losses in 2007. And soaring commodity and energy prices propelled the energy- and natural resource-production states to the top of the nation’s employment-growth rankings. As America’s economic dynamics continue to evolve in 2008, it is highly likely that equally dramatic shifts in state and regional growth positions will emerge. Just as the deepening housing contraction transformed the epicenters of the housing boom into the epicenters of the housing bust, the unfolding crisis in the nation’s credit markets threatens to undermine New York and the Northeast region. Such changes may place the Northeast’s economic laggards, among them New Jersey, at particular risk as 2008 advances.