When an incumbent governor goes before the voters seeking another term, the difference between reelection and defeat often lies in the economy. And while the economy’s performance affects people in many ways — inflation, home prices, gas prices, cost of living — probably few factors weigh more heavily on voters’ minds than the unemployment rate does. If you want a job and can’t find one — or if you feel insecure about the job you do have — your life is usually pretty unhappy, and you begin to suspect that your state is badly managed.

Thus, a governor’s chances for reelection often hinge on what his state’s department of labor finds when it calculates how many citizens are looking for jobs. But what if a state misleads? What if a state government puts out numbers indicating that the state’s unemployment situation is better than it is, and fixes them only later?

Republicans in New Jersey strongly suspect that is the case with their state’s Department of Labor and Workforce Development, as the department’s recent monthly surveys have followed a pattern of sunny — surprisingly sunny — initial numbers that are revised downward the following month. The revisions began as Gov. Jon Corzine, a Democrat, found himself in a tough reelection battle with Republican Chris Christie, who is hammering the incumbent for failed economic policies.

In August, the state department declared that “employment in New Jersey grew in July, led by a gain of 13,000 jobs at private sector companies.” The state’s numbers showed a decline of only 7,100 public-sector jobs, meaning that as a whole, 5,900 more New Jersey residents were going to work than had gone the previous month. It was great news for the state, and for Corzine, coming in a month when the nation had lost 247,000 jobs overall.

The Department of Labor and Workforce Development wasted no time assigning credit for the job growth in its press release:

“New Jersey’s private sector employment is trending in the right direction,” said Labor Commissioner David J. Socolow. “Governor Corzine’s economic recovery initiatives are fostering job creation, and the nation’s recovery program is helping to restore economic confidence. As a result, New Jersey has laid the groundwork for a recovery marked by stronger job growth when the global recession ends.” 

But September’s release offered some below-the-fold revisions. New Jersey’s private-sector job gain in July was 5,600 jobs, far short of the initial 13,000 claim; the net result was that 500 fewer New Jerseyans were going to work than the previous month. And while the governor had claimed to be holding a tough line on spending, the total number of jobs in the public sector was revised upward — from 643,300 to 644,300.

There were other oddities in that August release. The state claimed that 6,200 jobs had been created in leisure and hospitality fields in July. One could easily imagine hiring in Jersey shore communities, or at amusement parks, picking up during the summer, but this dramatic growth came as the nation as a whole lost 64,000 jobs in this field, according to the federal Department of Labor. The revised number, released in September, reflected 1,100 fewer new jobs than initially claimed.

The list goes on. The number of residents employed in trade, transportation, and utilities fields was not 839,200 but 836,600. The number employed in education and health services was revised from 596,200 to 593,500. Finally, the state had thought that the number of “other service” jobs had jumped from 167,800 in June to 169,600 in July, but by September it had determined the increase was much more modest, only 200 jobs to 168,000.

The department did revise a few estimates upward, and it’s worth remembering that every economist is entitled to revise his assessment as more complete data arrive. Chris Biddle, vice president of communication for the New Jersey Business and Industry Association, doubts any funny business is going on with the state government’s numbers. “The data is collected by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, and there’s no opportunity to futz with the numbers,” Biddle says. “It’s not at all unusual to see data revised up or down, sometimes dramatically, which is probably more likely in times of economic volatility like a recession.”

Biddle says the good news for Corzine was that even in the revised numbers, the private-sector jobs estimate was still up, if by a smaller amount. “It still remains to be seen if this is a sustainable turnaround,” he says.


The job-creation numbers are important because they represent much more than the usual throwaway applause line for Corzine; the August release prompted Corzine to run campaign commercials claiming that his economic-recovery plan is “beginning to work with thousands of new private-sector jobs, bucking the national trend.” Similarly, his campaign’s YouTube videos often list “creating private-sector jobs” among his accomplishments.

Biddle noted that Corzine ought to have known the risks of bragging about initial numbers.

However, there is a strange consistency to recent revisions. The state’s estimates of how many residents were employed in the private sector were revised down in the months of July, June, May, and April. (May’s initial private-sector employment number was revised downward by 600 jobs, while April’s number was revised down by 4,300.) The state’s private-sector number was last revised upward in March, long before campaign season began.

One might suspect that some larger, unforeseen trend is throwing off the department’s calculations, but the numbers from neighboring New York and Pennsylvania aren’t consistent with this theory. New York initially thought 8,644,600 of its citizens were employed in the month of July; in August, the revised number was listed as 8,665,200, an increase of 20,600. (Somehow the state’s press release refrained from crediting similarly embattled governor David Paterson. In fact, it offers the grim news straight, with the headline, “Highest Statewide Unemployment Rate Since 1983; Number of Unemployed in New York State Reaches New High.”) In the months of May and April, New York’s estimate was revised downward by a few thousand (it is worth remembering that New York has more than twice the population of New Jersey), and in March the number was revised up 2,100. This follows the pattern one would expect — overestimating in some months, underestimating in others.

During this period, Pennsylvania showed a pattern of quite modest adjustments, going up some months and down others. Pennsylvania’s number of employed in July was revised up 1,000 from the August release to the September one, and the same modest upward revision occurred for May’s figure. The June number was revised downward a thousand, as was the number for March. The numbers for April and February showed no change with additional data.

It’s not just Republicans who are taking New Jersey’s numbers with a grain of salt. Before the revision of the August number, New Jersey business groups greeted the figure warily. James W. Hughes, dean of Rutgers University’s school of planning and public policy; Nancy H. Mantell, director of the Rutgers Economic Advisory Service; and Joseph J. Seneca, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s school of planning and public policy, offered a skeptical assessment for the New Jersey Business and Industry Association, calling the August estimate “absolutely remarkable” — particularly the gain of 3,100 manufacturing jobs and 3,400 jobs in construction while both sectors “have been at the epicenter of job losses nationally.” They warned that “time will tell if this good news is too good to be true.”

New Jersey GOP spokesman Kevin Roberts says that Corzine and Socolow have never responded to GOP lawmakers’ questions about the revisions. On September 18, three Republicans on the State Assembly Labor Committee wrote committee chairman Joseph Egan, a Democrat, asking him to hold hearings on why the state agency “overestimated private sector job creation by 132 percent.” They have received no response.

The state’s unemployment numbers are usually released the third week of the month; the next report, coming sometime next week, will be the last one before Election Day. If the pattern of the last five months holds, the report will give Corzine another number to put in his campaign commercials; but several paragraphs down, the number of private-sector jobs gained in September will shrink.

— Jim Geraghty writes the Campaign Spot for NRO.


EDITOR’S NOTE: This article has been amended since its inital posting.