By David Cruz
Correspondent
Even in the waning months of his second term, Gov. Chris Christie still sweats the details of stagecraft as evidenced by the attention paid by staff to preparation for today’s announcement about the state’s suddenly rosy economic news, especially on job growth.
“New Jersey’s private sector employment increased by 60,800 jobs in 2016. That’s the largest single annual gain in New Jersey since the year 2000,” he claimed. “This is great news for our economy. And when you put it in the context of what’s happened to this administration since we began in February of 2010, we’ve new added over over 313,100 private sector jobs, 65,000 more than the pre-recession level, so we’ve not only regained all the jobs that were lost in the recession but we’ve added 65,000 more on top of that.”
Speaking before an audience made up of workers at the LG headquarters in Englewood Cliffs, the governor said that not only are more people working in New Jersey, but more people are looking for work.
“We have more people who are optimistic that if they look they can find work than the country, in general, and we still have a lower unemployment rate than the rest of the country has,” Christie said. “Usually those two operate in the inverse, so if you have a lower labor participation rate, you have a lower unemployment rate because those people are not factored in. The higher the labor participation rate, the higher the unemployment rate. That’s not working that way in New Jersey, which shows the strength of our economy.”
But the governor says the press will ignore all that good news and accentuate the negative. So, cue the contrarians. New Jersey Policy Perspective says the governor’s rose-colored glasses don’t accurately see the reality.
“From December 2007, when the recession began, to January 2017,” said a statement from the liberal think tank, “New Jersey has posted job growth of 0.7 percent while the nation has grown jobs by 5.2 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. While the state did add close to 70,000 jobs from January 2016 to January 2017, New Jersey’s jobs gains have been sporadic and inconsistent for the past several years.”
Open to questions — as he is on good news days — the governor covered the dismissal of the nation’s U.S. attorneys (he’s OK with how the president handled it), the weather emergency (it’s old hat to him, he says) and the president’s travel ban affecting tourism (bunk, he suggested).
“I don’t understand how the travel ban affected anybody because it was never put into effect,” he noted.
It’s the pesky, negatively-focused press that tries to turn any sunny day into a downpour, said Christie, joining the chorus of Republicans across the country who have targeted the news media as purveyors of doom and gloom. But, unlike the president, who called the press “the enemy of the people,” the governor acknowledged — kind of — the important role a free and independent press has to play.
“So, we’re not the enemy of the people?” I asked.
“Oh, definitely not,” he insisted. “And I disagree with the president on that. Absolutely. Never felt that way at all and I think you have an important and appropriate role to play.”
It’s enough to make you think the governor’s gone soft, or maybe it’s just all the good news that’s suddenly slipped by all the nattering nabobs in the New Jersey press corps.