The number of New Jersey’s wealthiest households has doubled over the last decade, and new data from the U.S. Census Bureau show that the middle class has continued to shrink following the Great Recession, widening the wealth gap in the Garden State.
The data, released Thursday, is part of the most recent 2010 to 2012 American Community Survey, a three-year sample study of U.S. residents focused on social, economic and housing issues. The new information shows that while the state’s richest residents have prospered considerably since the recession, the state’s middle class has languished.
“What it points to is that a college degree still has substantial value but people are going to have to work harder to get the better paying jobs. In the 1980s and early 1990s those jobs were there for the taking. They’re not there anymore,” said James Hughes, dean of the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University. “It’s not quite the hollowing out of the white-collar job industry, but it’s getting close.”