Moving to a new city means finding a new job, which in many cases is even more difficult than picking out your new house or condo. Find a job you must, however, or else you'll be quickly sent packing back to your job making crimp terminals in your old hometown for failure to pay rent. To keep your move to Jersey City from being an epic failure, do your research on the city's job market. This article should provide you with an overview on the city's largest industries and most likely forms of employment. You can start there.

The road to employment may be a rocky one in Jersey City, especially for you as a newcomer. The unemployment rate in the city has never been exactly low but since 2007 it has been increasing steadily. As of the end of 2009 it was sitting at 11.8%, which is high even compared to the New Jersey state average of 9.3%. Your only comfort is that with so many cities packed together in the Greater NYC area, you could always look for a job in electronic contract manufacturing across the river in New York (which has a lower unemployment rate) if you have to. About 7% of the population commutes elsewhere.

The largest industries in Jersey City by the number of people they employ are the Health Care and Retail sectors, with 22% and 16% of the market respectively. Manufacturing only accounts for 7%. This means that you're more likely to find a job selling test weights than you are to find a job making them. The largest employers in the city are the United States Postal Service with 4,000 employees, followed by the New Jersey Port Authority at 3,900 and Hudson County at 2,700. Other large employers include Healthcare Staffing and Consulting, Deutsche Bank, Insurance Service Office, and Fleet.

Males, whether they have English as a second language or as their first, most commonly find jobs in the finance and insurance sectors, (which includes banking, investing, and brokerage). These jobs account for 10% of the workforce. Also popular are professional and scientific services (lawyers and laboratories fall under this category) at 8%, tourism (i.e. restaurants and hotels) at 6%, transportation (including shipping) at 5%, construction at 5%, administration at 5%, and education at 4%.

Employment figures for woman are slightly different. The women of Jersey City prefer health care jobs to unloading boxes of temperature calibrators at the port. 15% of them have jobs in health care. A further 11% are employed in finance and insurance while 10% are teachers and education administrators. 7% work in professional and scientific services while 4% work in restaurants and hotels. 4% work in bureaucracy and 3% in some sort of administrative capacity.