In a speech at Montclair University in New Jersey this month, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York Bill Dudley said that New Jersey’s economy is improving. The improvement has been moderate, but it is there.
Dudley has been on a tour as of late, all of this in an effort to explain the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to the people that it affects the most. The tour comes at a time when New Jersey is facing its highest unemployment rate in three decades. The current unemployment rate is 9.8 in New Jersey, which is above the national unemployment rate of 8.1%. New Jersey lost 12,000 jobs in August 2012, but has added 25,000 jobs overall this year so far.
Dudley also made a scheduled stop at the Morris County Chamber of Commerce in Florham Park. Following that visit, Dudley toured a valve manufacturer in Dover and sat down for a roundtable discussion with Mexican-American businessmen.
During his Montclair University speech, Dudley spoke for nearly forty-five minutes and then took questions from a captive audience of students, university officials, and corporate executives from companies such as TD Bank, Bank of America, PSE&G, and Sealed Air. Dudley spoke about the impact of the Euro zone and the fiscal cliff of 2013 on the US economy, explaining that during the fiscal cliff of 2013 US taxes will rise and government spending will dramatically lowered. That is, unless Congress imposes a plan to fix the federal deficit in a way that is less detrimental.
Dudley supported a recent move on behalf of the Fed to spend $40 billion per month on mortgage bonds, a move that Dudley said was necessary considering how slow national economic growth has been. Without this move, Dudley said, the economy would remain too weak and not enough improvement would be seen in employment or business.
Dudley spoke about the housing crisis as well, and its impact on the current financial state in New Jersey. Although in very recent months the numbers are starting to look up ever so slightly, there has been a major impact to the economy from the sagging housing market and low construction rates. “Things are improving,” he said, “not as fast as we’d like. There is still a lot of stress on New Jersey families.”
Although the signs in the economy and the housing market are looking up, the debt rates facing New Jersey families is staggering. Figures show that as of the end of the second quarter of 2012, the average debt per person here was $63,000. Delinquency rates too are high, up from 7.4 percent in 2011 to 8.4 percent in 2012. Clearly, this data shows that many New Jersey families are still struggling continually to stay afloat.