TRENTON-Some 33 months since the end of the last recession, the federal income tax cuts enacted last year with the stated purpose of stimulating the economy and increasing jobs during this recovery continue to fall far short of predictions.

The president's Council of Economic Advisers predicted the tax cuts would create 5.5 million jobs by the end of this year. Data now available through August show a shortfall of 2.7 million jobs. Achieving the predicted level of job growth in New Jersey would have meant 125,400 new jobs. But the chances of that happening are remote. Through August, New Jersey is 45,000 jobs short.

To hit the federal target, New Jersey would have to gain over 20,200 jobs per month on average for the rest of the year. The job gain in August was 2,700, for a total of 50,700 new jobs since the end of the recession.

"Every month the message is hammered home. Income tax cuts tilted toward the wealthiest do not create jobs," said Jon Shure, president of New Jersey Policy Perspective, which is part of the Economic Policy Institute's JobWatch project. "The fact that New Jersey is doing better than most states is no comfort to people here who need the jobs that don't exist."

Behind reports of modest job creation in New Jersey are these realities:

• The current unemployment rate in New Jersey of 4.8 percent is still higher than when the recession began in March 2001 (3.5 percent).
• Since the recovery began, New Jersey has lost over 10 percent of its manufacturing jobs. That's 38,800 fewer manufacturing jobs in August 2004 than in November 2001.
• There are more workers than jobs in New Jersey and job creation is not keeping pace. Since the recession ended, the working-age population in New Jersey has grown by 2.2 percent while the number of jobs available has grown by only 1.3 percent. Had job growth kept pace with population growth, New Jersey would have 37,000 more jobs. According to the latest population and employment projections released by the state Department of Labor and Workforce Development last week, New Jersey's workforce population is expected to grow faster (1 percent per year) than the population rate (0.8 percent per year) over the next eight years.

Although the state continues to celebrate milestones, such as all-time employment highs and "100,000th worker trained," unless job growth keeps up with the workforce population growth, there will still be too many unemployed workers looking for jobs.

For more on JobWatch, go to http://www.jobwatch.org. The JobWatch analysis takes into account differences that can be expected among states in terms of job creation. EPI uses state-by-state employment forecasts of Economy.com, a leading forecaster of regional economics. Economy.com provides employment projections for each state for the fourth quarter of 2002 to the fourth quarter of 2004. Using this data, EPI calculated each state's share of the total employment growth and applied it to the projected 306,000-jobs-per month growth rate to calculate how much employment growth each state should experience if the federal government's employment projects were realized. That works out to an average of 9,000 new jobs per month for New Jersey.

Economic Policy Institute's JobWatch tracks current trends in the U.S. labor market and offers up-to-date readings on its status. New Jersey Policy Perspective is a non-profit, non-partisan organization that conducts research and analysis aimed at providing information to help inform debate in New Jersey.

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