Partisan Math
In New Jersey, the left's argument is that 6,600 illegal voters in one year is not a widespread problem, but 700 independent contractors filing claims is.
Last week, New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill announced that between June 2023 and June 2024, some 6,600 non-citizens were illegally registered to vote.
What caught my attention was that figure—6,600 people—and the fact that almost immediately after Sherrill’s announcement, the spin began with claims that a problem involving 6,600 people is not widespread. Even U.S. Senator Andy Kim of New Jersey used that exact language:
The most direct debate I saw on this point was on CNN, where the left-leaning host and panelists argued strongly that a problem involving 6,600 people is no big deal. These weren’t offhanded comments coming from the Democratic partisans; they argued the point for an entire segment and insisted that a problem involving 6,600 people in New Jersey is not at all widespread.
Here’s part of that segment:
As I watched that exchange play out on CNN, I felt as if I had fallen into a wayback machine.
It was a variation on an argument that we just saw take place a few weeks ago at a hearing in New Jersey’s Legislature about whether there is an actual widespread problem involving the misclassification of employees as independent contractors.
Here in my home state—where an independent-contractor rule scheduled to go into effect October 1 is so overly strict that financial advisers earning six figures a year are seeking legislative exemptions—Republican Senator Declan O’Scanlon asked the New Jersey AFL-CIO’s Eric Richard what figure would actually constitute a widespread problem in a state with an estimated 1.7 million independent contractors.
As it turns out, according to Senator O’Scanlon, the number of independent contractors filing claims with New Jersey’s Department of Labor is only about 700 each year. And almost all of them are coming from a single profession: rideshare and delivery drivers.
Democrats in New Jersey can’t have it both ways. Since at least 2019, in the Report of Gov. Murphy’s Task Force on Misclassification, the partisans have been claiming that the problem of employees being improperly called independent contractors is so “widespread” that we need all kinds of new laws and regulations to restrict everyone’s freedom to be our own bosses.
If the argument now from the left is that a problem involving 6,600 people a year is not widespread, then the argument that 700 people a year is a widespread problem is even more indefensible.
New Jersey’s Legislature Must Act
A lot of the numbers do not add up on the State of New Jersey’s claims that independent-contractor misclassification is a widespread problem.
There’s been mischaracterized state-level data and research that found its way into testimony before the U.S. Congress, where unionists including the national AFL-CIO are trying to restrict independent contracting all across the country.
Shifting claims about eye-popping amounts of missing money from the State of New Jersey’s coffers never seem to add up, just as they failed to add up in California.
Statements about money returned to misclassified employees in New Jersey seem awfully paltry for a so-called widespread problem.
Revelations about stop-work orders in New Jersey appear surprisingly rare if so many companies are actually misclassifying their employees.
And don’t even get me started about how antiquated data and statistics from as long ago as 1984 have been used to weaponize regulatory language and attack legitimate independent contractors across hundreds of professions at the state and federal levels alike.
There are very good reasons that public opposition to New Jersey’s independent-contractor rule stands at 99%. It is unconscionable that Governor Sherrill ignored all of this information—with her acting labor commissioner outright calling the mischaracterized data that citizens brought to the Labor Department’s attention irrelevant. It is absurd that the governor shoved aside the massive, rightful public pushback and put this rule through anyway.
New Jersey’s Legislature must act before the independent-contractor rule takes effect October 1. We need our lawmakers to pass the concurrent resolution that would invalidate this rulemaking, and then we need legislation to protect the livelihoods of independent contractors across hundreds of professions statewide.
Because 1.7 million independent contractors having our incomes and careers threatened—when everyone agrees the majority of us are legitimately in business—is, in fact, a widespread problem.