I lived in the Garden State for the first 18 years of my life, so it’s strange to cover and read about the governor’s race there today. The place names in the news articles are the same, but the descriptions are different, as if an H-bomb of gloom had detonated some years back and the fallout continued to plague the residents. To hear a lot of residents tell it, sometime between when I left and now the state stopped being a nice place to live, and its government deserves a lot of the blame.
There are a lot of people who used to live in New Jersey, and the number is increasing. In 2007, the Newark Star Ledger ran the headline “Jerseyans leave at alarming rate,” citing a Rutgers University report that residents were leaving at three times the rate they were just five years earlier; the report calculated that in 2006, the loss of people cost the state economy about $10 billion in income and about $680 million in state budget revenue. Some noted that the Rutgers study didn’t account for birth rates, death rates, and immigration from overseas — it counted only those who moved to or from other U.S. states — but the numbers still underlined a stark truth: Americans are more likely to leave New Jersey than to move there.
All anecdotal evidence suggests that the exodus has not slowed in the past two recession-plagued years. By one calculation, a net 300,000 people have left the Garden State in the past six years, with another 100,000 expected to flee in 2009.
In decades past, the state’s reputation as a place one drives through on the way to New York or Philadelphia — “You’re from New Jersey? What exit?” — was a bit like Seattle’s reputation for rain: Outsiders could have their jokes; it ensured that a nice place to live wasn’t too crowded. Even if the view of oil refineries from the Turnpike wasn’t particularly scenic, it was a symbol of New Jersey’s promise of long-term economic prosperity. The northern counties were home to hundreds of thousands New York City’s most prosperous workers. Elizabeth was one of the largest ports on the east coast, and Newark International Airport was always guaranteed to be one of the nation’s busiest. The middle of the state teemed with high-paying jobs in the pharmaceutical, chemical, and telecommunications industries. The shore and Atlantic City were guaranteed tourism destinations. Princeton had established itself as one of the world’s greatest universities. And it was easy to forget how much of the state’s economy, particularly in the southern counties, was driven by agriculture — blueberries, corn, tomatoes, cranberries, and dairies.
The state had always had a high cost of living, but it paled in comparison to New York City and most of Connecticut. The cities of Newark, Jersey City, and Camden may have had their crime and urban blight, but the state was packed with charming small towns, often with tree-lined neighborhoods and old-fashioned downtown commercial cores — Westfield, Lambertville, Cape May, Flemington, Plainfield, Clinton, Toms River, Teaneck. Proximity to everything good about Manhattan and Philadelphia without the hassles of living there, coupled with hot summers, snowy winters, pretty fall foliage, diners, the legend of the Jersey Devil, the horror of Rutgers football — the package deal of life in New Jersey seemed pretty sweet, all things considered. Residents could easily conclude they were getting a good life for all that cost of living.
These days, the cost is higher, and life tastes bitter.
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