NJBIZ Looking Ahead 2026: Biggest challenges

As part of the NJBIZ Looking Ahead 2026 special feature, we asked industry leaders across New Jersey: What do you see as the biggest challenge facing your industry in the next 12 months? Read the Letter from the Editor and other Q-and-A’s here.

Cannabis

Sam Brill
CEO, Ascend Wellness Holdings

Even with positive federal developments, the industry continues to face margin pressure, price compression and complex regulatory requirements. The  challenge is translating policy progress into meaningful operational relief while maintaining high standards for quality and compliance. We continuously put significant effort into listening to our consumers, research & development, and elevating quality standards beyond industry benchmarks. Still, broader economic uncertainty and how states ultimately interpret federal changes remain important considerations.

Food/hospitality

Amanda Stone
Vice president of public affairs, NJ Restaurant and Hospitality Association

Labor remains the most pressing challenge — recruiting, retaining, and managing rising wages and benefit costs. In that context, preserving the tip wage structure is critical and remains a cornerstone of stability in managing labor costs for the restaurant industry.

Health care

Debbie Hart
CEO, BioNJ

The increasingly complex policy landscape – particularly in Washington, D.C. – remains the industry’s greatest challenge and will continue to impact innovation and patient access through 2026. These policies are influencing long-term investment decisions and valuations, adding pressure to an already strained system and causing investors to pull back. At the same time, shifting trade policies, tariffs, and investment restrictions are reshaping global operations and regulatory strategies, often placing disproportionate strain on small- and mid-cap companies. These pressures are intensified by constrained federal research funding, as NIH [National Institutes of Health] support has declined sharply since 2022. Access to capital, especially at the earliest stages of development, remains a persistent obstacle. The current funding environment has made it difficult for emerging companies to gain traction, with even established hubs like Boston and Cambridge feeling the impact.

Michael Maron
CEO, Holy Name

Maintaining financial stability in an environment where costs are fixed and reimbursements are not. The cost curve – labor, drugs, supplies – is permanently higher. Revenue is not keeping pace. Anyone who pretends otherwise is lying to themselves.

Brian Lawrence
CEO, FellowshipLIFE

The labor shortage, coupled with persistent inflation, will continue to be the greatest challenge. Demand for aging services is surging, but the number of workers entering the field isn’t keeping pace. Without structural solutions, this mismatch will increasingly strain care delivery.

Labor

Greg Lalevee
Business manager, IUOE Local 825

Too much disagreement between Trenton and Washington slowing or killing critical infrastructure investment, especially the Hudson tunnel.

Law

Christine Amalfe
President, New Jersey State Bar Association; partner, FBT Gibbons

Adapting to the rapid expansion of AI and its potential to automate aspects of legal work is a challenge. The biggest challenge for law firm managers is selecting, rolling out and financing the various offerings, and hopefully making the right choice that keeps the law firm ahead of the technology curve. Well-being in the legal profession also remains a pressing concern. The profession has seen a troubling decline in mental health, with anxiety, depression and stress increasingly prevalent among legal practitioners. These issues stem in part from the inherent 24/7 demands of legal work with the constant stream of emails, virtual meetings and client requests. Promoting outreach, education, and accessible resources is essential to improving the mental and physical well-being and the overall quality of life for legal professionals.

Jeffrey Rosenthal
Partner and chair, Bankruptcy and Creditors Rights, Mandelbaum Barrett

One of the biggest challenges heading into 2026 is the continued impact of elevated interest rates and tighter credit conditions. In New Jersey, this is contributing to increased financial stress on middle-market businesses, fewer new loans being extended and declining equipment values as liquidation activity rises. As borrowing costs remain higher for longer, more companies may struggle to refinance or maintain liquidity, leading to an uptick in restructurings and bankruptcies.

Money

Edward Moran
Senior vice president, commercial banking market president, OceanFirst Bank

The banking industry remains competitive with both traditional and non-traditional options available for businesses and consumers; while it is good to provide alternatives for deposit and loan products, I believe competition from non-bank sources including fintech, private credit, as well as multiple banks competing for the same transactions, creates additional challenges for our industry.

Adam Kleinman
New Jersey commercial market executive, Wells Fargo

Economic uncertainty will continue to influence decision-making as we enter 2026. While interest rates are projected to come down, there’s still volatility around tariffs and whether businesses can pass those costs to customers. Some industries manage this well; others struggle, and many fall in between. Businesses should plan for flexibility and resilience.

Public relations

April Mason
President, Violet PR

The rapid adoption of AI has accelerated content production across nearly every sector, but it has also contributed to a decline in quality and originality. As audiences are inundated with generic, automated messaging, skepticism is rising and attention is becoming harder to earn, making it more difficult for organizations to communicate with clarity and impact. This shift has also added significant noise to the media ecosystem. Journalists increasingly point to flooded inboxes filled with AI-generated press releases, while audiences face an overwhelming volume of low-quality automated content across digital platforms. Operating in this environment presents clear challenges, but it also creates opportunity. Many of our conversations with prospective clients begin with the realization that approaches that once worked are no longer effective. At that point, organizations face a choice. Some default to a “just use AI” mindset, producing inauthentic or low-effort communications that struggle to cut through. Others invest in the right PR partnership to help establish a clear voice, speak directly to real audience needs, and consistently deliver value. Those organizations are the ones that continue to break through.

Real estate

Bill Hassan
Executive vice president, CBRE

Supply chain constraints industry wide and lack of access to utility power.

Benjamin Downing
Managing principal, DeSimone Consulting Engineering

As the engineering industry continues its years-long trend of consolidating into larger firms with a focus on offering core disciplines, it presents a challenge to clients who also need specialized, in-house services — and in response, we’ve been adding expertise and essential specialized services to our multi-service offering. Over the next 12 months, we aim to alleviate this challenge by informing industry leaders, developers and architects that we offer these specialized, in-house services — along with the clear benefits to project cost, schedule and quality. By streamlining the design process with an approach that can integrate structural design, detailing, façade & building envelope consulting, vertical transportation and even steel procurement, we’re helping clients optimize project efficiencies – and quality – in the face of this challenging industry shift. For steel structures, we can provide fabrication-ready modeling, which can eliminate months from the schedule between procurement and steel erection on site, addressing a key challenge clients will face over the next 12 months – as always.

David Greek
Managing partner, Greek Real Estate Partners

The biggest challenge facing our industry over the next 12 months is uncertainty around tariffs and trade policy. Shifting trade policies make it difficult for companies to plan, leading many manufacturers and logistics users to delay decisions, shorten lease terms and hesitate on new investments until there is greater clarity about the direction of policy.

Rob Kossar
Vice chairman, JLL Northeast Industrial

Vacancy has peaked in most of our markets and is now starting to come down, and that shift is creating some very real friction. Tenants who were waiting for a major market correction have, in many cases, missed the window for the most favorable deal terms. At the same time, we’re seeing a lot of sticker shock on renewals, which may push more cost-sensitive occupiers to look at secondary markets or lower-quality buildings, even if that comes with operational compromises. On the capital side, developers and landlords are feeling pressure to put money to work. As vacancy declines, opportunities will increase, but discipline is critical. The last cycle showed us what happens when enthusiasm outpaces fundamentals, and most groups are trying not to repeat that. From a brokerage standpoint, this environment reinforces the need to stay very focused on client priorities while continuing to build and diversify the pipeline. Over the past 24 months, we’ve converted a significant portion of our pipeline, which speaks to our execution capability, but it also means we have to stay proactive and intentional about business development.

Tim Greiner
Executive managing director, JLL

The interest rate environment remains a top issue. High borrowing rates are still placing pressure on real estate investors who need to finance new development and existing assets. Rates have impacted general economic activity and real estate investment volume during the past several years, and they will not learn the near-term future of this issue until the Federal Reserve reveals its course in 2026. A lack of quality office space will also challenge the commercial real estate market in the year ahead. The current imbalance continues to constrain deal activity, even as tenant demand improves in select submarkets.

Charles Burton
Head of government and community relations, Lefrak

We agree that affordability is the state’s top issue. In fact, affordability is not limited to any one economic issue. In terms of housing, the economics are simple: We know that the best approach to driving down the costs of purchasing a new home or apartment rents is to increase the supply of homes and apartments. On other issues, such as reliable transit service, convenient health care access and new job creation, the economics are more complicated. Journalists Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson remind us that, “Whether government is bigger or smaller is the wrong question. What it needs to be is better. It needs to justify itself not through the rules it follows but through the outcomes it delivers.” Over the next 12 months, New Jersey and the business community will have an opportunity to work together to deliver actions to solve the problems of affordability.

Matthew Harding
CEO, Levin Management Corp.

Over the next year, a key challenge will be managing through a more uneven environment where costs remain high and consumer confidence is softer. Even so, the broader outlook remains constructive: after a near-term dip, forecasts suggest 2026 should see a return to positive net leasing, with retailers occupying more space than they vacate overall. The takeaway is that performance will hinge on execution — moving quickly, staying disciplined on tenant mix and keeping centers aligned with the daily-needs traffic that supports long-term stability.

Blake Chroman
Principal, Sitex Group

The biggest challenge will be keeping pace with what the market now demands, particularly the rising need for utility-heavy industrial sites. As more users require greater power, fiber and other infrastructure, the gap between “industrial” and “highly functional, utility-ready industrial” will widen. At the same time, the sector continues to attract significant investor attention, which increases competition for both acquisition opportunities and well-located sites. That combination, higher tenant requirements and growing capital pressure, will make it increasingly important to identify assets that can meet evolving needs without losing pricing discipline.