According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a division of the Department of Labor, unemployment rate in the state of New Jersey has remained around the national unemployment rate throughout the six month period between March 2010 and August 2010. In March, the level of the NJ unemployment rate was 9.8 percent, representing 449,000 people out of a Civilian Labor Force of 4,563,000 people. By August of 2010, the NJ unemployment rate had fallen to 9.6 million people out of a Civilian Labor force of 4,000,510 people, meaning that 400.6 thousand people were out of work.
During this same period of time, between March and August 2010, there were 331 mass layoffs in the state of New Jersey. As a result, there were 38,019 individuals who filed an initial NJ unemployment claim. An NJ unemployment claim is an attempt to begin to collect New Jersey unemployment insurance for an individual who has not already been collecting unemployment.
The largest single sector which provides jobs in the state of New Jersey is jobs that are provided by the government. However, given the fact that government jobs are fairly safe from high levels of turnover, it is unlikely that much of the NJ unemployment claim data is due to government jobs.
