The New Jersey bleedout continues. ExxonMobil and Samsung are running for the exits. Joining them this week is candy and confectionery giant Mars Wrigley, which just announced that it is shifting its corporate headquarters from Newark to Chicago.
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Since the 1940s, Mars Wrigley has been headquartered in Ironbound (AKA Downneck), a rather odd urban offshoot paralleling the Passaic River. It is one of the last livable areas of Newark. Mars Wrigley represents its largest industrial resident.
Mars Wrigley is the producer of M&Ms, a legendary candy among one of the most popular in the world, along with Snickers, Milky Way, and Skittles. The company acquired chewing gum manufacturer Wrigley in 2008 and is evidently consolidating its head offices at the Wrigley Chicago HQ.
Mars Wrigley filed a WARN (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification), a sixty-day notice required by the U.S. Labor Department, with the state of New Jersey last Friday. The closure will cost NJ 307 jobs. It will be completed by October.
Though no particular reason was given, there’s no doubt that a large role was played by New Jersey’s deteriorating business climate. New Jersey has the highest corporate tax rate in the country at 11.5%, and state officials, including the new Democrat governor Mikie Sherrill, have shrugged off the increasing number of businesses fleeing the state. This summer has been a massacre, with ExxonMobil completing its plans to move its headquarters to Texas, and Samsung abandoning its new corporate building in Englewood Cliffs. Gov. Sherrill’s office had no comment about Mars Wrigley’s announcement.
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Michelle Siekerka, president of the NJ Business and Industry Association (and what a thankless job that must be), had this to say:
“On a summer Friday when people should be getting excited about the weekend ahead, we are instead hit with the news of another unfortunate exodus of a job creator in New Jersey.
We need to wrap our arms around this and do something now that sends a message to our largest employers that things are going to change so we can stop this disturbing trend.”
That appears to be merely a cry in the night at this point. NJ has lost nearly 10,000 jobs due to companies leaving the state in the first six months of this year. So who decides to throw in the towel next week?
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