New Jersey Economy

Ranked 47th in size with an area of 8,729 square miles, New Jersey is a small, yet muscular, state. The NJ economy is robust, resting on a base of agriculture, widely-varied businesses and industries, and tourism. New Jersey boasts a median household income of $55,146, the highest in the nation. Nine of New Jersey's counties are among the wealthiest 100 of the country. And, according to an article in the Newark Star-Ledger, women in New Jersey earn the highest per capita income in the US.

New Jersey's position at the center of the BosWash megalopolis, between Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, DC, facilitated its rapid growth through the boom of the 1950s and beyond. This favored location also affords NJ a large and well-educated labor pool with which to staff its myriad enterprises.

Known as the Garden State, New Jersey's agricultural outputs are nursery stock, horses, vegetables, fruits and nuts, seafood and dairy products. Hammonton in the southern part of the state is recognized as the blueberry capital of the world.

New Jersey is home to numerous chemical plants and major pharmaceutical firms, including Merck, Wyeth, Johnson and Johnson, Novartis, and Pfizer. Significantly, the largest petroleum containment system outside of the Middle East is located in New Jersey, which is well known for its abundance of oil refineries. In the business arena, nearly 100 companies on the Fortune 500 list have headquarters in or conduct business from New Jersey.

The New Jersey economy has also benefited greatly from its tourism industry. Chief among New Jersey's attractions is the Jersey Shore with its seaside resorts and beaches. Among them, Ocean City, rated by The Travel Channel as the best family beach of 2005; the reborn Atlantic City, with its casinos, amusement pier, beaches, and a 5.75 mile boardwalk, the longest in the world; and Cape May, well known for the charm of its Victorian gingerbread houses and for bird watching, which is capped off by the annual World Series of Birding.

The Pine Barrens of southern and central New Jersey are another major point of interest. Uncommon soil conditions have developed a unique and diverse spectrum of plant life, such as orchids, carnivorous plants, and the rare pygmy Pitch Pines that depend on fire to reproduce. The Pine Barrens gave rise to the legend of the Jersey Devil, said to have been born to a local woman named Mrs. Leeds in the 1700s. In western NJ, where it borders Pennsylvania, a more rural landscape features the Delaware Water Gap, a mountain pass where the Delaware River traverses a large ridge of the Appalachian Mountains. The Delaware Water Gap is the site of a National Recreation Area, where visitors may enjoy rafting, canoeing, swimming, fishing, hiking and rock climbing.

New Jersey Real Estate

Like its economy, the New Jersey Real Estate market is an active one. Proximity to New York and Philadelphia make NJ real estate especially desirable. In 2005, 67% of New Jersey's population lived in owner-occupied homes. The statewide median value was $333,900 and the median monthly housing cost for those with mortgages was $1,938.

New Jersey Demographics

New Jersey's estimated 2005 population of 8,717,925 ranks it 11th in the US. However, NJ is the most densely populated state, at 1,174 residents per square mile, although density varies widely. Immigration from outside the US has resulted in a net increase of 357,111 people, and migration within the country produced a net loss of 277,900 people. There are 1.6 million foreign-born living in the state, accounting for 19.2% of the population. Eighty-six percent of residents over 25 have high school diplomas and 34% have a bachelor's degree or higher.

New Jersey Luminaries

Over time, New Jersey has produced a lengthy list of noteworthy people, including 5 signers of the Declaration of Independence, Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, and Abraham Clark. With his 1,093 patents, inventor Thomas Edison made a major contribution to the New Jersey economy, as well as that of the US. In the music and entertainment world, famous New Jersyites include Frank Sinatra, Count Basie, Bruce Springsteen, Whitney Houston, Dionne Warwick, Patti Smith, and Queen Latifa, among many others. And who can forget Monopoly, the board game whose properties are named after the streets of Atlantic City?