Coronavirus Impact Hits Shore Town Economies Hard

By Angie Gonzalez

COVID-19, also known as the coronavirus, had its first impact on New Jersey on March 4 in Fort Lee. Since then, it has quickly spread; it started off with just one person getting sick day by day, to hundreds getting sick on a daily basis. The virus can spread very easily, what makes it worse is that there is still no vaccine for this. The outbreak of COVID-19 eventually led governor Phil Murphy to a state lockdown; schools, business, even parks were closed only 10 days after the first patient tested positive. New Jersey has not been the same since then.

Since quarantine started, the Garden State has had a huge economic impact due to the virus. The state is mainly focused on using its money to hospitals treating patients, paying the nurses and doctors. Governor Murphy had to veto many bills coming from Trenton, due to the state of emergency with our money. One area that has been impacted the most with their money has been South Jersey. Based on the article by David Danzis in The Press of Atlantic City, the lockdown has caused Atlantic City to drop almost 28% of its profit, which is more than 2 billion dollars. This is the largest negative economic impact the well-known Monopoly City has ever had. Which is a downfall for South Jersey because just last year, “the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2019 “marked the southern New Jersey regional economy’s best performance since 1984.”

Not only has Atlantic City felt the hit of the state’s lockdown, so has Ocean City. Ocean City is not only known for its famous boardwalk, but for its mining of oil and gas, transportation, and travel arrangements. “Oil-and-gas towns were among the most affected areas because of a sharp decline in travel,” according to the Patch.com article by Josh Bakan, “Ocean City May Be Among Worst Hit By Recession Amid Coronavirus.”

Ocean City was not prepared for their businesses to drop that quickly. It is for everyone’s safety to limit their travel or to just stay home; which limits the amount of times trains are being used or if they are even being used, leading to the economic drop in Ocean City. Even though Ocean City started to open slowly, like take outs from local restaurants, online shopping from local stores, it will take a while for the city’s economy to increase back to where it was due to the closing of the city’s transportation.

Nobody knows when things will go back to the life we used to have, or if we will even ever go back to our ‘normal’ lives, but we sadly do know that New Jersey will struggle to go back to the way it was. We sadly do know that it will be a challenge for people to find jobs post coronavirus. However, we do know that this is a chance for communities to pull together so that they can survive this pandemic and hopefully get back to normal this summer.