S. Jersey faring worse on jobs than Phila. area

The Delaware River marks not just a geographic barrier between Southeastern Pennsylvania and South Jersey, but also a persistent economic divide.

Compared with Philadelphia's suburban Pennsylvania counties, the South Jersey counties of Burlington, Camden, and Gloucester have higher jobless rates, higher mortgage-delinquency rates, and lower average wages, according to government data.

The unemployment rate in Burlington, Camden, and Gloucester Counties was 10 percent in September, compared with 7.1 percent in Bucks, Montgomery, Chester, and Delaware Counties.

The jobless rate of 19.2 percent in the troubled city of Camden weighs on the figure for South Jersey, but even without it, the aggregate rate for the three counties - which are home to nearly a quarter of the region's population - was 9.6 percent.

Add Philadelphia's 11 percent unemployment rate to the mix in Southeastern Pennsylvania, and the overall rate there jumps to 8.4, still significantly below the rate in South Jersey.

Second-quarter mortgage-delinquency rates were 3.88 percent in Burlington County, 4.55 percent in Gloucester County, and 4.76 percent in Camden County, Federal Reserve Bank of New York data show. In Philadelphia's Pennsylvania suburbs, the highest rate was 3.01 percent in Delaware County, the lowest was 1.83 percent in Chester County.

Average weekly wages also do not look good for South Jersey, where pay is 19 percent lower than in Philadelphia's Pennsylvania suburbs.

What's going on?

Ask an economist, and you will probably hear that part of the answer lies in the strength of health care and educational services in Pennsylvania.

But exclude Philadelphia, where those industries accounted for 37 percent of private-industry jobs in March, and the two regions have about the same portion of jobs in health care and education. The figure in South Jersey was 18.5 percent. In the counties north and west of Philadelphia, it was 18.8 percent.

John Burzichelli, a state assemblyman whose district covers parts of Gloucester, Salem, and Cumberland Counties, finds historical reasons for South Jersey's relatively weak economy.

"South Jersey is just different than the western suburbs of Philadelphia because, with the Delaware River as a barrier, we did not enjoy the collateral strength of the city when the city was a hub in the '30s, '40s and '50s," he said.

By contrast, the South Jersey economy was driven for a long time by agriculture in the interior and by pockets of manufacturing and heavy industry, especially along the river, he said.

But those manufacturing sites have been disappearing for decades, and the most recent job-destroying recession has taken more. In the Burlington County river towns of Florence and Burlington City, for example, two pipe foundries employing 380 have closed in the last two years.

Southern New Jersey caught up to Philadelphia's western suburbs a long time ago as an attractive place to live, but it still faces a big challenge, Burzichelli said. "Our issue now is jobs."