“New Jersey is within a 24-hour drive of 40 percent of the entire U.S. population,” the Moody’s report said.
In fact, New Jersey’s warehouse industry has been one of the strongest performers in the state’s overall job market as the unemployment rate has dropped to 4.1 percent, which is well below the current national jobless average. Amid recent government investment in infrastructure that benefits the warehouse industry in New Jersey, and a still growing consumer demand for online shopping and other forms of e-commerce, experts say conditions here could stay hot for years.
In all, New Jersey’s warehousing and storage subsector had a net gain of an estimated 7,300 jobs between June 2016 and June 2017, according to the latest figures provided by the New Jersey Department of Labor. That equals roughly 11 percent of the total job growth the state has enjoyed since June 2016, according to the figures. And those gains in the warehousing and storage subsector came after a net improvement of roughly 8,500 jobs in the same subsector between June 2006 and June 2016.
Contributing in a big way has been Amazon, which in recent years has opened more than five million square feet of warehousing and distribution space in New Jersey, according to the Moody’s report. Amazon’s footprint in the Garden State includes facilities in Carteret, Florence, Logan Township, Robbinsville and Woodbridge, and new Amazon facilities are also opening in Cranbury, Edison and Logan Township.