New Jersey Auto Loans

Geography

New Jersey is bordered on the north and northeast by New York (parts of which are across the Hudson River, Upper New York Bay, the Kill Van Kull, Newark Bay, and the Arthur Kill); on the east by the Atlantic Ocean; on the southwest by Delaware across Delaware Bay; and on the west by Pennsylvania across the Delaware River.

New Jersey is often broadly divided into three geographic regions: North Jersey, Central Jersey, and South Jersey. Some New Jersey residents do not consider Central Jersey a region in its own right, but others believe it is a separate geographic and cultural area from the North and South.

Within those regions are five distinct areas, based upon natural geography and population concentration. Northeastern New Jersey lies closest to Manhattan in New York City, and up to 1 million residents commute daily into the city for work, often via public transportation. Northwestern New Jersey is more wooded, rural, and mountainous. The Jersey shore, along the Atlantic Coast in Central and South Jersey, has its own unique natural, residential, and cultural characteristics owing to its location by the ocean. The Delaware Valley includes the southwestern counties of the state, which reside within the Philadelphia Metropolitan Area. The Pine Barrens region is in the southern interior of New Jersey. Covered rather extensively by mixed pine and oak forest, it has a much lower population density than much of the rest of the state.

The federal Office of Management and Budget divides New Jersey’s counties into seven Metropolitan Statistical Areas, with 16 counties included in either the New York City or Philadelphia metro areas. Four counties have independent metro areas, and Warren County is part of the Pennsylvania-based Lehigh Valley metro area. New Jersey is also at the center of the Northeast megalopolis.

High Point, in Montague Township, Sussex County, is the state’s highest elevation, at 1,803 feet (550 m) above sea level. The state’s highest prominence is Kitty Ann Mountain in Morris County, rising 892 feet. The Palisades are a line of steep cliffs on the west side of the Hudson River, in Bergen and Hudson Counties. Major New Jersey rivers include the Hudson, Delaware, Raritan, Passaic, Hackensack, Rahway, Musconetcong, Mullica, Rancocas, Manasquan, Maurice, and Toms rivers. Due to New Jersey’s peninsular geography, both sunrise and sunset are visible over water from different points on the Jersey Shore.

Demographics

The United States Census Bureau estimates that the population of New Jersey was 8,908,520 on July 1, 2018, a 1.33% increase since the 2010 United States Census. Residents of New Jersey are most commonly referred to as “New Jerseyans” or, less commonly, as “New Jerseyites”. As of the 2010 census, there were 8,791,894 people residing in the state. The racial makeup of the state was:

17.7% of the population were Hispanic or Latino (of any race).

Non-Hispanic Whites were 58.9% of the population in 2011, down from 85% in 1970.

In 2010, unauthorized immigrants constituted an estimated 6.2% of the population. This was the fourth-highest percentage of any state in the country. There were an estimated 550,000 illegal immigrants in the state in 2010. Among the municipalities which are considered sanctuary cities are Camden, Jersey City and Newark.

The United States Census Bureau, as of July 1, 2017, estimated New Jersey’s population at 9,005,644, which represents an increase of 213,750, or 2.4%, since the last census in 2010. As of 2010, New Jersey was the eleventh-most populous state in the United States, and the most densely populated, at 1,185 residents per square mile (458 per km), with most of the population residing in the counties surrounding New York City, Philadelphia, and along the eastern Jersey Shore, while the extreme southern and northwestern counties are relatively less dense overall. It is also the second wealthiest state according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The center of population for New Jersey is located in Middlesex County, in the town of Milltown, just east of the New Jersey Turnpike.

New Jersey is home to more scientists and engineers per square mile than anywhere else in the world.

On October 21, 2013, same-sex marriages commenced in New Jersey.

New Jersey is one of the most ethnically and religiously diverse states in the United States. As of 2011, 56.4% of New Jersey’s children under the age of one belonged to racial or ethnic minority groups, meaning that they had at least one parent who was not non-Hispanic white. The state has the second largest Jewish population by percentage (after New York); the second largest Muslim population by percentage (after Michigan); the largest population of Peruvians in the United States; the largest population of Cubans outside of Florida; the third highest Asian population by percentage; and the second highest Italian population, according to the 2000 Census. African Americans, Hispanics (Puerto Ricans and Dominicans), West Indians, Arabs, and Brazilian and Portuguese Americans are also high in number. New Jersey has the third highest Asian Indian population of any state by absolute numbers and the highest by percentage, with Bergen County home to America’s largest Malayali community. Overall, New Jersey has the third largest Korean population, with Bergen County home to the highest Korean concentration per capita of any U.S. county (6.9% in 2011). New Jersey also has the fourth largest Filipino population, and fourth largest Chinese population, per the 2010 U.S. Census. The five largest ethnic groups in 2000 were: Italian (17.9%), Irish (15.9%), African (13.6%), German (12.6%), Polish (6.9%).

India Square, in Bombay, Jersey City, Hudson County, is home to the highest concentration of Asian Indians in the Western Hemisphere. Meanwhile, Central New Jersey, particularly Edison and surrounding Middlesex County, is prominently known for its significant concentration of Asian Indians. The world’s largest Hindu temple was inaugurated in Robbinsville in 2014, a BAPS temple. The growing Little India is a South Asian-focused commercial strip in Middlesex County, the U.S. county with the highest concentration of Asian Indians. The Oak Tree Road strip runs for about one-and-a-half miles through Edison and neighboring Iselin in Woodbridge Township, near the area’s sprawling Chinatown and Koreatown, running along New Jersey Route 27. It is the largest and most diverse South Asian cultural hub in the United States. Carteret’s Punjabi Sikh community, variously estimated at upwards of 3,000, is the largest concentration of Sikhs in the state. Monroe Township in Middlesex County has experienced a particularly rapid growth rate in its Indian American population, with an estimated 5,943 (13.6%) as of 2017, which was 23 times the 256 (0.9%) counted as of the 2000 Census; and Diwali is celebrated by the township as a Hindu holiday. In Middlesex County, election ballots are printed in English, Spanish, Gujarati, Hindi, and Punjabi.

Newark was the fourth poorest of U.S. cities with over 250,000 residents in 2008, but New Jersey as a whole had the second-highest median household income as of 2014. This is largely because so much of New Jersey consists of suburbs, most of them affluent, of New York City and Philadelphia. New Jersey is also the most densely populated state, and the only state that has had every one of its counties deemed “urban” as defined by the Census Bureau’s Combined Statistical Area.

In 2010, 6.2% of its population was reported as under age 5, 23.5% under 18, and 13.5% were 65 or older; and females made up approximately 51.3% of the population.

A study by the Pew Research Center found that in 2013, New Jersey was the only U.S. state in which immigrants born in India constituted the largest foreign-born nationality, representing roughly 10% of all foreign-born residents in the state.

For further information on various ethnoracial groups and neighborhoods prominently featured within New Jersey, see the following articles:

As of 2011, 56.4% of New Jersey’s population younger than age 1 were minorities (meaning that they had at least one parent who was not non-Hispanic white).

Note: Births in table don’t add up, because Hispanics are counted both by their ethnicity and by their race, giving a higher overall number.

As of 2010, 71.31% (5,830,812) of New Jersey residents age 5 and older spoke English at home as a primary language, while 14.59% (1,193,261) spoke Spanish, 1.23% (100,217) Chinese (which includes Cantonese and Mandarin), 1.06% (86,849) Italian, 1.06% (86,486) Portuguese, 0.96% (78,627) Tagalog, and Korean was spoken as a main language by 0.89% (73,057) of the population over the age of five. In total, 28.69% (2,345,644) of New Jersey’s population age 5 and older spoke a mother language other than English.

A diverse collection of languages has since evolved amongst the state’s population, given that New Jersey has become cosmopolitan and is home to ethnic enclaves of non-English-speaking communities:

High-rise residential complexes in the borough of Fort Lee, Bergen County

Paterson, known as the “Silk City”, has become a prime destination for an internationally diverse pool of immigrants, with at least 52 distinct ethnic groups.

Skyscrapers in Jersey City, one of the most ethnically diverse cities in the world

Federal Courthouse in Camden, which is connected to Philadelphia via the Benjamin Franklin Bridge in the background

By number of adherents, the largest denominations in New Jersey, according to the Association of Religion Data Archives in 2010, were the Roman Catholic Church with 3,235,290; Islam with 160,666; and the United Methodist Church with 138,052. The world’s largest Hindu temple was inaugurated in Robbinsville, Mercer County, in central New Jersey during 2014, a BAPS temple. In January 2018, Gurbir Grewal became the first Sikh American state attorney general in the United States. In January 2019, Sadaf Jaffer became the first female Muslim American mayor, first female South Asian mayor, and first female Pakistani-American mayor in the United States, of Montgomery in Somerset County.

Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Newark, the fifth-largest cathedral in North America, is the seat of the city’s Roman Catholic Archdiocese.

Temple Sharey Tefilo-Israel, in South Orange, Essex County. New Jersey is home to the second-highest Jewish American (Hebrew) population per capita, after New York.

Swaminarayan Akshardham (Devnagari) in Robbinsville, Mercer County, inaugurated in 2014 as the world’s largest Hindu temple

Little Ramallah in Paterson is an increasingly popular destination for Muslim immigrants.

For its overall population and nation-leading population density, New Jersey has a relative paucity of classic large cities. This paradox is most pronounced in Bergen County, New Jersey’s most populous county, whose more than 930,000 residents in 2014 inhabited 70 municipalities, the most populous being Hackensack, with 44,519 residents estimated in 2014. Many urban areas extend far beyond the limits of a single large city, as New Jersey cities (and indeed municipalities in general) tend to be geographically small; three of the four largest cities in New Jersey by population have under 20 square miles of land area, and eight of the top ten, including all of the top five have land area under 30 square miles. As of the 2010 United States Census, only four municipalities had populations in excess of 100,000, although Edison and Woodbridge came very close.