Credit: (AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey)
File photo: Nov. 23, 2020, a café in a Target store in Clifton converted into a curbside pickup staging area during the coronavirus pandemic
A year after the first cases of the coronavirus brought on statewide shutdown orders to curb new infections, New Jersey’s economy may no longer be in a freefall, but thousands of residents remain out of work and many small businesses are still struggling for survival.
The crush of unemployment benefits triggered by the pandemic also exposed a woefully overburdened unemployment system, and is an ongoing a source of complaints from many of those who are still seeking benefits as they look for jobs.
Credit: 3D Animation Production Company from Pixabay
File photo
They warned “winter is coming” and said then-President Donald Trump’s administration deserved “shame” for not sending New Jersey more robust federal aid.
Democrats who control both houses of the state Legislature last year said they needed an emergency borrowing issue bypassing the constitutional mandate for voter approval as a “last resort” to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic. Their goal: address what Gov. Phil Murphy’s administration was calling a “historic fiscal crisis.”
But now the state’s fortunes are nowhere near as dire as predicted. A revenue collapse that at one point was being forecast by Murphy to be on par with the Great Depression has not fully materialized.