New Jersey has 40,000 manufacturing jobs it can’t fill, according to state Sen. Michael Testa.
It also has a lot of young people packing up and heading to southern states.
Testa (R-Vineland), co-chair of the Legislature’s manufacturing caucus, thinks those two problems have the same answer.
“To me, manufacturing is a true way out of the affordability issue that we have,” he said Friday at the Southern New Jersey Development Council’s 44th annual Sound Off for South Jersey legislative conference at The Westin Mount Laurel.
“Because young people can get into manufacturing careers with upward mobility, partnering with our community college system with stackable credentials, and then we can actually begin to solve some of the affordability issues for young people in the state.”
Testa shared the stage with Sen. John Burzichelli (D-Paulsboro). The two represent neighboring districts and often agree more than their party labels suggest. On this topic they did.
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Testa didn’t sugarcoat the problem.
“You know we’re in a crisis, but we’ve been there for a lot of years,” he said.
He described a brain drain. New Jersey does a good job educating its kids, he said, but many who go to college in the South, at schools such as Clemson, Georgia, Tennessee or Alabama. When they get there, they find it far cheaper to live there — and they stay.
“They’re telling their parents, ’I don’t want to live in your basement or in the attic for a number of years or in my old room. I’m moving,’” he said.
Housing is a big part of it. The average first-time homebuyer in New Jersey is now over 40, and the average home costs roughly $560,000, Testa said.
Burzichelli offered an example from his hometown. A house in a tough Paulsboro neighborhood that sold for $47,000 seven years ago is now on the market for $230,000.
“That’s insanity,” he said.
He pointed partly at private equity firms buying up properties and driving prices up. And while he backed Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s plan to build homes on state-owned land, he drew a line.
“I personally don’t think we, as a state, should be in the house-building business,” he said. “But we should make it easier to build homes.”
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The way out, Testa and Burzichelli both said, are jobs young people can get without leaving the state.
Testa pitched South Jersey as the place for them. Manufacturers looking to move to New Jersey, or to expand when they’re land locked up north, should look south, he said.
“One thing we are rich with, is land, especially in Cumberland County and areas of Cape May County,” he said.
Testa and the Legislature’s South Jersey delegation have backed the $500 million Next New Jersey manufacturing tax credit program to help.
Asked for the one message he wanted Trenton to hear, Burzichelli went straight to the classroom.
“We have to get vocational education back into our high schools, so people are prepared to make a living in places that they can make a living,” he said.
Burzichelli also had a word for the pessimists. When polled, he said, New Jerseyans are generally happy to live here, and the state has more good to talk about than bad.
Those 40,000 manufacturing jobs are a place to start.
