NJBIA President & CEO Michele Siekerka issued the following statement  regarding New Jersey’s placement of 31st overall in CNBC’s ranking of America’s Top States for Business in 2026, announced by the network this morning. 

As part of the rankings, New Jersey was also rated 50th for business friendliness. 

“While it’s a positive to see New Jersey maintain good foundational metrics like quality of life (3rd) and education (2nd), the continuation of our bottom-of-the-pack ranking for business friendliness and high cost of doing business,  continue to be of great concern.

“Obviously, we didn’t arrive here in the short term. New Jersey employers have  endured decades of anti-business policies, and our state has a reputation for  not being business friendly.

“Yet despite this, we continue to see trends that should serve as a wakeup call: an alarming number of job creators deciding to move, grow or invest outside of New Jersey, and WARN Act notices that have totaled more than 9,000 jobs this year.

“We see new anti-business policies that continue to change the rules of engagement, making it impossible for our job creators to have the predictability and certainty they need to make forward looking investments.

“This has come in the form of a new Corporate Transit Fee by the previous  administration, just as our largest employers were expecting and planning for the corporation surtax to sunset.

“It has come in the form of wholesale changes to the ABC test that make it nearly impossible to prove that a worker is an independent contractor.

“It has come in the form of a Climate Superfund bill that seeks to retroactively penalize businesses billions of dollars for legally providing an essential product.

“And it has come in the form of a new misplaced tax on business that improperly penalizes employers with 50 or more workers on Medicaid, an unfair measure to businesses and nonprofits that will likely have serious unintended consequences for many workers who choose Medicaid coverage.

“So, we are at an inflection point and must ask ourselves: What is next for our job creators?

“Governor Sherrill has set out on an aggressive ‘Saving You Time and Money’ agenda with the intent of driving down the costs of doing business. This is a great initiative that we wholly embrace and appreciate.

“But at the same time, we just received another budget and new policies  that include new tax increases and costs of doing business.

“New Jersey needs a true reform agenda and economic growth strategy  now, with a clear, intentional path to driving down business taxes and burdens, instead of seeking new ones.

“That includes the permanent sunset of the Corporate Transit Fee in two years. That includes consideration for the property taxes that our job creators pay. They are not the recipients of any of the property tax programs  that exist today, despite paying almost half of the state’s property taxes.

“And we must build a competitive business climate founded on predictability, reliability and consistency, rather than 180-degree policy shifts, to encourage long-term investment from our job creators.”