Department of Defense and New Jersey: a high-count USAspending join

A million-plus Defense records on NJ

This relationship page exists because agency 097 and place-of-performance NJ coincide on 1,023,205 award records summing to $42,544,622,968.19. A high count with a mid-tens-of-billions dollar total produces a low mean of about $41,600. Many small actions can sit beside fewer large contracts inside the same sum.

The join does not name contract vehicles, installations, or vendors. Those labels are not in the facts. Ranking New Jersey against New York or Pennsylvania would require other packets.

Repeat the pair until it sticks: $42,544,622,968.19 on 1,023,205 awards, both keys required. Drop the state and the agency hub takes over. Drop the agency and the state hub takes over. This page is the remainder after both filters.

Code 097 is still one awarding agency

Department of Defense is the USAspending label for 097. Other codes are other pages. The agency hub without New Jersey will not equal $42,544,622,968.19. The New Jersey hub without 097 includes civilian awarding agencies. Overlay /states/nj/agencies/097/ is the both-keys table for the 1,023,205-award count.

If a citation of $42,544,622,968.19 does not mention both the awarding agency and the place-of-performance state, it is not citing this join. If a citation of 1,023,205 does not mention both keys, it is not this file’s count.

New Jersey is not the New York metro

Place of performance NJ excludes New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Connecticut. Defense awards coded to those states are outside $42,544,622,968.19. Place of performance is not contractor headquarters. A firm in another state can perform in New Jersey; a New Jersey firm can perform elsewhere.

The New Jersey federal spending hub shows 097 next to other agencies that also use NJ. Adjacency is not a regional Defense total.

Households, facilities, and vendors are not columns in the packet. Listing them would be invention. $42,544,622,968.19 remains an obligation sum on a state tag. The overlay can show rows; this narrative will not invent names for those rows.

How to read 1,023,205

Award count is a count of records in the aggregate. Repeat awards, modifications issued as new records, and small actions all increment the total. It is not 1,023,205 companies and not 1,023,205 payments. The obligation sum remains $42,544,622,968.19. Outlays are unpublished. No year is in the facts.

Average about $41,600 should not be treated as a typical prime contract. The overlay is the place to see row-level amounts.

What the pair does not prove

A million-plus Defense records in New Jersey do not prove the state economy is Pentagon-driven, and they do not prove waste or efficiency. They do not connect USAspending to FEC donations. See Department of Defense in New Jersey, New Jersey federal spending, Department of Defense, and All spending ties.

How to read this pair next to the hubs

New Jersey’s Defense pair is extreme on count: 1,023,205 awards under $42,544,622,968.19, about $41,600 per record.

Four links keep the pair honest: Department of Defense in New Jersey, New Jersey federal spending, Department of Defense, and All spending ties. $42,544,622,968.19 lives on the first. The others are context, not substitutes. 1,023,205 remains an award-record count.

USAspending’s obligation field can be modified after the fact. Outlays can lag or never match. No year is supplied here. $42,544,622,968.19 should not be labeled cash-on-hand. Geography is one state tag, not a region.

This file is prose around a packet. It is not a substitute for row-level research. It does not merge campaign finance into federal awards. It reports $42,544,622,968.19 on 1,023,205 awards for this intersection only.

Snapshot language matters. $42,544,622,968.19 and 1,023,205 are the harvest used to write this file. USAspending aggregates can be rebuilt. If a later overlay disagrees, the live table is the operational source and this prose is historical relative to that packet. That is not a reason to ignore the join; it is a reason not to freeze $42,544,622,968.19 as a permanent law of the state. The keys — awarding agency and place-of-performance state — remain the definition of the page even if the dollars move.

Questions

How much has DoD obligated in New Jersey?

USAspending records $42,544,622,968.19 in obligations for agency 097 with New Jersey place of performance, on 1,023,205 awards. That is an obligation join, not an outlay total. The pair is awarding agency 097 (Department of Defense) and place-of-performance New Jersey. It is not Department of Defense nationwide and not New Jersey from every awarding agency.

Why are there more than a million awards?

1,023,205 is the award-record count for 097 × NJ. Combined with $42,544,622,968.19, the average is about $41,600. The count is not unique vendors. High-volume Defense files can accumulate many small records. 1,023,205 is the award-record count for this pair, not unique vendors.

Does this include New York Defense awards?

No. Place of performance is New Jersey only. New York and other states are outside $42,544,622,968.19 and outside the 1,023,205 awards. Only place-of-performance New Jersey plus awarding agency 097 (Department of Defense) enter $42,544,622,968.19. Adjacent state codes are other filters, if they exist as ties at all.

Are these outlays?

No. The aggregate is obligations. Outlays can differ. The 1,023,205 figure is a record count, not a payment count. USAspending’s source note for this aggregate is that obligations are not outlays. Place of performance New Jersey is a geography tag, not a roster of residents, vendors, or named facilities.