With rising global temperatures and increasingly chaotic weather patterns, New Jersey’s economy could be among the few in the country that would be most devastated in the event of a direct hit by a hurricane during the 2019 hurricane season, according to a study released Thursday by Moody’s.
Only three other states would fare as badly according to the Wall Street rating agency: Florida, Massachusetts and New York. All told, the four states would “account for the greatest amount of potential economic disruption in dollar terms,” the study says.
Among the 18 states and Washington, D.C. in the ‘hurricane corridor,’ the four cited by Moody’s account for two-thirds – or $66 billion – of all wages earned in the flood zones of at-risk counties, the study continues.
The circumstance is largely due to the “high concentration of economic” activity in the Boston, New York City and Boston metro areas, all of which are major coastal cities in the hurricane zone.
Superstorm Sandy in 2012, which brought much of New Jersey and the New York City metro area to a standstill for several weeks, is still fresh in many residents’ minds.
Of all the wages earned in New Jersey, $10 billion of those wages, or 15 percent, are earned in flood zones, according to the study. Three and a half billion dollars of those wages are earned in Hudson County, the most at-risk of the flood zones, according to the study.
