Free Republic

Budget advisers have suggested that Gov. Jon S. Corzine add sales tax to more items and raise the gasoline tax because the state’s finances are "perilously close to ruin.’’ In a six-page report submitted this month, the advisers urged the increased sales taxes, as well as immediate cost-cutting, including a freeze of state work force levels and "symbolic’’ pay cuts for all nonunion state workers, adding that layoff plans should be prepared. Advertisement Corzine called it an "interim report’’ and that no policy has been set. "We’re going to scrub the budget with absolute focus in the next few weeks...

Continuing its lackluster economic performance, New Jersey lost 4,700 jobs last month, the biggest decline in nearly two years. The decline in payroll employment reported yesterday by the state Department of Labor and Workforce Development was the largest since payrolls fell by 6,200 in January 2004. The state gained 5,600 jobs in September. The state's unemployment rate fell to 3.9 percent in October, from 4.4 percent in September, matching the low for the year last reached in May and remaining below the national 5 percent unemployment rate. But economists discounted this unusually large decline, saying the unemployment figure can vary...