2024 municipal population estimates indicate a return to population growth in urban centers – and in the rest of the state. Late in the decade of the 2000s, around the time of the Great Recession, New Jersey’s population growth pattern underwent a major shift.
Demographics and Trends
Urban Centers Are Back! In Fact, So Is the Whole State of New Jersey
Tuesday, August 12th, 2025New Jersey’s Changing Face: Planning for Intergenerational Households in a Diverse State
Tuesday, July 1st, 2025New Jersey’s demographic shifts and our current housing supply and affordability crisis require planners and local officials to rethink what many consider “traditional” housing models and explore, embrace, and encourage a variety of living arrangements. Intergenerational housing models—living arrangements that bring together people of different generations, regardless of if they hold familial relationship—offer ways to meet our housing and community needs and plan for the future.
The Road Ahead: Why Housing Trends Will Shape New Jersey’s Future
Thursday, June 26th, 2025On Day 1 of the New Jersey Planning and Redevelopment Conference, the keynote session “The Road Ahead: Economic, Housing, and Real Estate Trends” painted a clear picture of the challenges and opportunities shaping New Jersey’s housing future—and why the stakes are higher than ever.
New Report Digs Deeper into Diversity in Morris and Monmouth Counties
Monday, January 29th, 2024New Jersey is an expensive state, with among the highest housing costs in the country. It is also one of the most segregated states in the nation by both income and race, despite being one of the most racially diverse states overall. A new report from New Jersey Future explores the relationship between the enforcement of housing requirements, housing affordability, and racial and economic diversity, using a comparison between two demographically similar suburban counties—Morris and Monmouth—that followed different trajectories in complying with New Jersey’s affordable housing obligations.
With Recession in the Forecast, How Prepared is NJ’s Economy for Upcoming Rain?
Thursday, July 20th, 2023As the world slowly but surely emerges from the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, all of us are evaluating the new parameters of our state and national economies that have experienced stimulus spending, historic inflation, supply chain disruptions, and high interest rates all in quick succession.
Promoting Integration at the Local Level
Thursday, July 20th, 2023While New Jersey is one of the most diverse states in the nation at the macro level, at the local level it is also one of the most segregated. The state has grown more demographically diverse over the last two decades, but most of its individual towns and neighborhoods are either predominantly white or predominantly non-white, with few places occupying the “diverse” range in between.
Ten Years After Sandy, a Look at Population and Housing Trends at the Jersey Shore
Tuesday, October 25th, 2022Both before and after Superstorm Sandy, the trend at the Jersey Shore has been toward higher home values, a smaller percentage of housing units being occupied year-round, and an increasing presence of retirees among year-round residents. Is the Shore becoming a playground for the rich? And specifically rich retirees?
New NJF Report Explores How to Promote Racial Integration in NJ Municipalities
Thursday, September 22nd, 2022New Jersey is paradoxically one of the most diverse and most segregated states in the nation. The state has grown more diverse over the last two decades, with its non-Hispanic white percentage shrinking from two-thirds of the state population in 2000 to a little more than half as of the 2020 Census, with notable proportional growth among Hispanic and Asian-American communities. But New Jersey’s macro-level diversity often does not translate into integration at the local level, and places that are integrated at the local level don’t always stay that way.
Hispanic Heritage Month and the Growth of New Jersey’s Latinx Population
Wednesday, October 13th, 2021Some of my favorite stories are the ones my grandparents tell me about their journey from Bolivia to the U.S.—about finding their first jobs, struggling to “fit in,” and raising a family of six in a North Jersey suburb. Stories about finding a sense of community in an unfamiliar place.
