New Jersey public sector retirements soar as Emperor Christie threatens to gut benefits

[marmar]

(Bloomberg) State and local-government workers in New Jersey are retiring at the highest rate in at least a decade as Governor Chris Christie seeks to charge them more for health insurance and cut their pensions.

A total of 10,885 people in the Public Employee Retirement System have filed since January to leave the workforce this year, according to state Treasury Department records. That’s already higher than the 10,731 workers enrolled in that fund who retired in all of 2010. If applications through the rest of the year continue at the current pace, at least 13,000 state and local workers would retire this year, a 20 percent increase.

“Some folks wanted to get out of Dodge before the changes come -- that’s both a natural and human response and I’m not disturbed by it,” Christie, a first-term Republican, told reporters today in Trenton. “Any time you’re talking about changing the system, folks are going to get nervous.”

Including teachers, police and firemen, more than 20,000 public employees filed retirement papers last year, the most in at least a decade. Teacher retirements nearly doubled to 7,123 from 3,663 in 2010. So far this year, 4,808 educators have submitted retirement papers. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-06/new-jersey-worker-retirements-surge.html

[rfranklin]

1. And that is probably a plus for Christie and the Republicans...

Their objective is to cripple the unions. Less members, less dues, less political power.