New Jersey Losing High Tech Jobs
From the Star Ledger:
N.J. losing technology 'toddlers' to other states
N.J. losing technology 'toddlers' to other states
A report from the Stevens Institute of Technology warns the state is fast losing its telecommunica tions expertise to hungry states such as Texas and California. So unless New Jersey spends half a billion dollars during five years on grants and tax breaks for "toddlers," the state will miss out on jobs and revenue from the next wireless revolution, Stevens said in a 58-page proposal.
"The technology is growing. It's not a shrinking pie. But New Jersey's slice of this pie continues to diminish," said Stevens professor M. Hosein Fallah, a former Bell Labs engineer who authored the paper for the Hoboken school.
The pitch follows a state-spon sored study last year that traced New Jersey's loss of thousands of high-tech jobs, a major source of tax revenue. Stevens said more research jobs may be lost through the proposed merger of telecom giants Alcatel and Lucent Technologies, parent of Bell Labs in Murray Hill. State policy should encourage laid-off researchers to start companies here, Fallah said.
...
New Jersey must do something to create high-tech jobs, said Rutgers University economist James Hughes.
"Other states are being very aggressive," said Hughes, citing Pennsylvania's investment of a portion of its tobacco industry settlement in tech ventures.
New Jersey has lost 14 percent of its high-tech jobs since 2000, across a range of sectors including telecom, according to a state study co-authored by Hughes last year. While only 7 percent of the state's 4 million workers hold high-tech jobs, those jobs account for almost a third of the state's income tax revenue.
4 Comments:
boils down to a quality
of life issue.
just to expensive, and
take a look around,
highways,malls, elements.
you kidding me.
its no wonder companies are
fleeing and NJ has a problem
attracting.
very sad. NJ the welfare state
has lost the edge.
Why on earth would any company want to stay in NJ anymore. It's simply not fiscally worth it!
It is very hard to keep tech jobs here, and it is going to get a lot harder when (if) Fort Monmouth closes. It has long been the chief communications technology base for the Army, and lots of small engineering outfits exist off of it.
Unless you live around here and deal with people connected to the Fort you have no idea how many businesses are connected to it.
I generally don't like basing the economy around a government function, but that Fort is a big part of what keeps Monmouth County going, and the state is going to have to work awfully hard to come up with a similar good job generator if it does go.
Lindsey
For tech NJ has a huge advantage. All the youngins want to live in NYC. The tech companies if given the opportunity could set up in JC or Newark and have a good ready and willing talent pool from NY/JC/Hoboken. If our state would give the benefits for high tech companies to move in. Additionally NJ already has a very educated population, we have more engineers per capital than any other state.
The big issue now is that we are a victim of our own success. Given how well the regional economy has grown the costs of doing business here are prohibitively expensive.
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