By David Cruz
Correspondent
Good news on the jobs front. New labor department data shows that New Jersey added 13,800 jobs in August. Those jobs helped drop the state’s unemployment rate to 5.7 percent. It’s lowest since August 2008, but still higher than the national average at 5.1 percent. The job gains came in business and professional services, education and health.
That’s bound to be good news for some 500 business and political leaders meeting in Atlantic City. For the Chamber of Commerce’s first New Jersey Business Summit. NJTV News Correspondent David Cruz spoke with Anchor Mary Alice Williams about what the first day’s conferences held.
Speaking from outside one of the ballrooms at the Borgata where the panels were held all day, Cruz says he attended a few and while it was “pretty dry stuff” it was also “very important stuff” with business, education and government people in attendance. “They’re dealing with four main issues: taxes, transportation and infrastructure, state regulations and workforce development,” he said. “There were panels on all of those today and there will be a panel with legislative leaders tomorrow which will kind of be the highlight of all this.”
He talked to some of the business people there and he says there’s a sense of unease that the economy isn’t quite hitting on all cylinders. “They’re looking forward to tomorrow’s panel with legislative leaders, which will include the Speaker of the House and the State Senate President. They’re going to want some answers and they’re eager to get in some questions with them tomorrow,” Cruz said.
He also spoke to Atlantic City Mayor Don Guardian earlier in the afternoon. When asked if Guardian had anything to say anything about Stockton college selling Showboat Cruz said his answer was more cryptic than helpful.
“We saw him at Harrah’s where they opened a conference center, and we did talk to him about the sale, and he says he knows who the buyer is, but he was very coy about who that buyer would be until the official announcement,” Cruz said. He also said while they tried to get it out of him, you might be better off try to figure it out for yourself:
“He has a building there, what are you going to do with it? Is it going to be the casino that it was before, half that size or quarter size or boutique casino or no casino at all? Is he going to pick up a convention and conference center, they have facilities that they could make some of it condo? Is he going to stay with the theme with the House of Blues, or are they going to pick up a whole different entertainment genre? Or am I all wrong on all those things and there’s strictly going to be a hotel coming to Atlantic City to pick up all the businesses from conferences and conventions,” Guardian said.
However, Cruz said there was a lot of talk about condo development on the waterfront in Atlantic City. The last, and final day, of the summit is tomorrow.