Christie’s political action committee did not immediately respond to a request for comment
The state’s unemployment rate of 6.5 percent exceeds the national average by a full percentage point, and more people are moving out of New Jersey than any other. Its credit rating has been downgraded nine times since Christie took office.
Officials, economists and consultants hired to advise on where to locate corporate real estate or a company say there is no simple explanation for New Jersey’s sluggish economy, but add that other states have done more to attract business.
“The recession forced a lot of companies to look at the cost of doing business. Everybody looks at New Jersey and says, ‘Wow, there are lots of companies there, we’d like to come pick them off,'” said Christopher Lloyd, a Richmond, Virginia-based site selection specialist for McGuireWoods Consulting.
In an interview, Guadagno defended the administration, noting the decline in the state’s unemployment rate from 9.8 percent the month that she and Christie took office in January 2010 to the current 6.5 percent.
Still, on the night back in June that Guadagno pitched to investors in Philadelphia, she was scheduled to attend a dinner with a number of handpicked companies “so that we can start, one at a time if we have to, to debunk the myth that New Jersey’s a hard-to-do-business-in state.”