Gov. Murphy’s Legacy Part III: Lousy Business Climate, High Unemployment, and a Mess for Gov. Sherrill

We wanted to add a few more data points before we close the book on Gov. Murphy’s two terms as governor. Put simply, they show that under Gov. Murphy, New Jersey was a lousy place to do business and that the state’s economy, businesses, and citizens suffered as a result. As with the United Van Lines and U-Haul ranking we reported on last week, these latest data points highlight how unaffordable New Jersey became under Murphy and the negative consequences for the state. We say again that, to his immense discredit, Murphy was a status quo governor: he was elected by the government unions (with the NJEA leading the way) and he largely governed for their benefit. He’s left quite a mess for newly elected Gov. Sherrill.

Gov. Sherrill nails Murphy. First, we must share a quote from Gov. Sherrill (from an interview with NJ.com’s Brent Johnson via Politico‘s New Jersey Playbook) that underscores how the status-quo Murphy operated:

I just ran an entire campaign on driving down costs for everyone, and then the Legislature and the former governor just blow up the budget at the 11th hour.

Gov. Sherrill is merely confirming what Murphy did for every year of his two terms. Under Murphy, state government spending increased from $35 billion to $59 billion, a jaw-dropping 69% increase, far in excess of inflation. As Sherrill noted, this year’s budget was just more of the same. Murphy’s government union pals benefited hugely from all this government spending but the New Jersey economy, businesses, and citizens paid the costs: Murphy raised taxes across the board to pay for all this spending, just as his government union pals wanted. High taxes are a huge contributor to how unaffordable New Jersey has become.

Unaffordability makes New Jersey is a lousy place to do business. That’s what WalletHub‘s ranking of the “Best & Worst States to Start a Business (2026) indicates:” unaffordability makes New Jersey one of the very worst states to start of business, and by implication, for small businesses to operate in general. New Jersey was ranked 5th-worst among the states. Here are some of the key rankings:

• 48th for cost of labor
• 45th for office-space affordability
• 42nd for cost of living

These rankings are hardly surprising. New Jersey businesses face some of the highest costs of any state, including the highest marginal corporate tax rate of 11.5%, the highest property taxes, and one of the highest minimum wages and unemployment insurance taxes. This is entirely consistent with the Tax Foundation‘s “State Tax Competitiveness Index,” which ranked New Jersey 49th or 50th for every year of Murphy’s two terms.

For the record, here are WalletHub’s top five states to start a business:

• 1. Florida
• 2. Utah
• 3. Texas
• 4. Oklahoma
• 5. Idaho

And the bottom five:

• 46. New Jersey
• 47. Connecticut
• 48. Maryland
• 49. Hawaii
• 50. Rhode Island

Notice a familiar pattern? The top five are all smaller-government, lower-tax, less powerful government union states — in a word, “red” states. The bottom five are all the opposite “blue” states. Under the status-quo Murphy, New Jersey was a very blue state, indeed.

When businesses suffer, jobs suffer: 5.4% unemployment. New Jersey’s lousy business climate has predictable negative consequences for the job market. As reported by NJ.com, New Jersey’s most recent unemployment rate reached 5.4%, the highest since COVID and the second-worst among the states (only California’s was higher). The national average is 4.4%. New Jersey actually had a net loss of 5,300 jobs in October and November 2025. All of this was under Murphy’s watch.

Gov. Murphy: the status quo governor. We could go on and on and on. The bottom line is that Murphy’s two terms served his and his government union pals’ interests and left New Jersey with an affordability crisis and all the negative consequences that flow from that. That’s the mess that he left for Gov. Sherrill, and she knows it.