New Jersey Hit 1,000 September Layoffs. UBS Is Cutting 41 More in Weehawken

WEEHAWKEN — Johnson & Johnson’s latest New Brunswick filing pushed New Jersey’s September layoff notices over 1,000 workers. The number everyone will repeat is 1,053. The Hudson County line is smaller and more familiar: UBS is cutting another 41 jobs at Lincoln Harbor.

That 41 is the third UBS Weehawken notice this year. The New Jersey Department of Labor WARN archive lists 103 jobs effective June 22–24, 65 more effective Aug. 26, and 41 scheduled for Nov. 25–30. Add those three 2026 rounds and the total at the Weehawken campus is 209. That is not a plant closing. It is a campus being trimmed in chapters.

The Weehawken site is UBS’s U.S. wealth-management headquarters, a waterfront office stack at 1000 and 1200 Harbor Boulevard staring at Midtown. The cuts sit inside a global cleanup after the Credit Suisse takeover. UBS has said it is chasing about $13.5 billion in gross savings by the end of 2026. Locally, that lands as operations, IT, finance, and back-office jobs leaving a township that sold itself as the cheaper, closer-to-the-city alternative to Manhattan.

Forty-one jobs will not empty Lincoln Harbor. Two hundred and nine in one year is a different sentence. The same WARN archive shows JPMorgan Chase filing for 134 Jersey City jobs in March and 63 more in August. Across the river, federal workers are being told the Army Corps of Engineers’ New York District and North Atlantic Division headquarters is moving to Jersey City. The same county is watching a Swiss bank take people out.

The statewide pile

September’s nine company notices, as tallied after the J&J filing, include:

• Wonder Group: 533, listed out of Parsippany, tied to Cranford and Fairfield production sites as work shifts toward Swedesboro
• Banker Steel: 115 in South Plainfield — the company says it is relocating to Clayton, not shutting down
• Fiserv: 98 in Berkeley Heights
• Sheraton Atlantic City Convention Center Hotel: 91
• Johnson & Johnson Services: 87 in New Brunswick, effective Dec. 18
• Educational Testing Service: 62 in Princeton
• Barrette Outdoor Living: 59 in Egg Harbor City
• Merck: 54 in Rahway
• UBS: 41 in Weehawken

J&J had already cut 86 at New Brunswick earlier this year, effective Aug. 21. A company spokesperson tied the latest reductions to efficiency work around the planned orthopedics spinoff. Wonder’s 533 is the month’s wrecking ball; several of the other filings are second or third swings at the same New Jersey payroll. NJ 101.5 and Patch have put announced 2026 cuts statewide above 13,000 when earlier months are stacked on top of September. Patch put the year-to-date figure at 14,033.

WARN notices are not the same as final pink slips. Some workers transfer. Some filings cover a relocation that keeps the job in New Jersey, just in another county. Banker Steel is making that argument. Wonder is making a version of it, with the work moving south. UBS is not. The Weehawken notices are job cuts at the same address.

What it means on this side of the tunnel

Hudson County sells proximity: Manhattan views, PATH and ferry access, corporate campuses that were supposed to catch the overflow when New York got too expensive. UBS used that pitch. So did a lot of the waterfront. A bank that keeps filing 60-day notices is telling you the overflow is reversible.

September’s statewide total will get the headlines because 1,000 is a round number and J&J is a New Jersey name. The Hudson story is the repetition. One hundred and three. Then 65. Then 41. Same township. Same boulevard. Same year.

Sources: N.J. Department of Labor 2026 WARN Notice Archive; NJ.com, Sept. 21, 2026; Hoodline; NJ 101.5; Patch; BioSpace (J&J statement); Wonder Group statement; Banker Steel statement, Sept. 18, 2026; Reuters on UBS cost-savings target; City & State New York on Army Corps relocation.