Only 3 of 9: What’s Really Behind NJ’s May Jobs Gain

Another jobs report with a nice top line but more complicated fine print.

The state added 2,200 payroll jobs in May and the unemployment rate dropped to 4.7% – down from 4.8 and April’s numbers were revised up from a gain of 5,600 jobs to a much better 7,100 jobs.

But the details underneath are mixed and raise the same question we’ve been asking for a while now – is New Jersey’s labor market actually strengthening, or are a few sectors and public-sector hiring masking broader vulnerabilities?

According to the May report, only three of nine private-sector industries added jobs during the month. Leisure and hospitality added 3,000 jobs, construction added 600 and trade, transportation and utilities added 200.

Professional and business services lost 1,500 jobs. Manufacturing lost 500. Private education and health services lost 400. Other services lost 300 and financial activities lost 200. Information was flat.

The public sector added 1,300 jobs in May.

So the overall gain of 2,200 jobs doesn’t tell the whole story – job growth in a context where most private sectors are either flat or moving south which is what we saw in May.

The year-over-year numbers are also telling.

Over the year, New Jersey’s private sector lost 3,100 jobs and the public sector lost 2,800 jobs over the same period.

The biggest year-over-year bright spot was private education and health services, which added 26,100 jobs that were offset by losses across much of the rest of the private sector.

Trade, transportation and utilities lost 6,400 jobs over the year.

Leisure and hospitality lost 5,300.

Manufacturing lost 5,000.

Construction lost 3,800.

Financial activities lost 2,600.

Other services lost 1,600.

Information lost 1,100.

Professional and business services lost 500.

Yes, New Jersey added jobs in May, the unemployment rate fell and April was revised upward.

But most private sectors did not grow in May and the private sector is still down year-over-year.

This also fits with other data we’ve been looking at. In April, we wrote about the gap between the unemployment rate and payroll jobs and noted that a falling unemployment rate does not always mean the job market is strengthening. Payroll employment tells us how many jobs exist in the economy, while the unemployment rate reflects people in the labor force who are unemployed and actively looking for work – a number that can drop for a variety of reasons including people just giving up.

In May, we looked at federal Business Employment Dynamics data showing private-sector churn, with about 196K private-sector job gains offset by about 212K private-sector job losses – a net of nearly 17K going in the wrong direction.

In June, we also reported that NJ WARN notices through May 2026 were running higher than the same five-month period in 2025, 2024 and 2023 in both the number of notices and number of workers. The current 2026 WARN archive now includes June-posted notices tied to Merck in Rahway, three Optum-related entities in Somerset, Rutherford and Basking Ridge, UBS in Weehawken, Citibank in Hudson and Bergen counties, AT&T in Cumberland County and Digital Room LLC in Saddle Brook, adding 486 more workers and eight additional notice entries to the list and bringing the current ’26 total to 7,956 workers and 70 WARN notice entries.

For now, the May report is best read as a mixed signal.

No red lights yet.

But definitely still an orange glow.

One note: NJDOL’s release has private sector job loss at 3,100, although the individual sector changes come to a different total.

Sources:

NJDOL May 2026 New Jersey Employment Report
https://www.nj.gov/labor/lwdhome/press/2026/202600618_jobs.shtml

NJDOL 2026 WARN Notice Archive
https://www.nj.gov/labor/assets/PDFs/WARN/2026_WARN_Notice_Archive.pdf

BLS Business Employment Dynamics in New Jersey, Third Quarter 2025
https://www.bls.gov/regions/mid-atlantic/news-release/businessemploymentdynamics_newjersey.htm

BLS Metropolitan Area Employment and Unemployment Release Schedule
https://www.bls.gov/schedule/news_release/metro.htm

BLS Local Area Unemployment Statistics
https://www.bls.gov/lau/