New Jersey’s financial problems are so severe that even Gov. Chris Christie’s signature pension overhaul, in which he cut back benefits as union members marched and booed, might not be enough to pull the state out of its hole, a panel of fiscal experts said on Thursday.

The State Budget Crisis Task Force, a bipartisan panel, wrote in its latest report that Mr. Christie’s pension effort had slowed but not stopped the runaway growth in the cost of New Jersey’s promises to retired public workers. Officials of both parties had shortchanged the pension coffers for so many years before Mr. Christie’s initiative that it will prove extremely difficult to catch up now without diverting money away from other essential state programs, like education and infrastructure, the panel said.

This year, the state contributed $1 billion toward pension costs, but by 2018, it will have to come up with about $5.5 billion a year — roughly 40 percent of what it now spends on public education. There is no apparent source of that much money in the state’s $31 billion annual budget.

“The growth in pension requirements, plus the ever-increasing cost for current and retiree health benefits will crowd out other budgetary needs,” said the task force, a project led by the former Federal Reserve chairman, Paul A. Volcker, and the former New York lieutenant governor, Richard Ravitch.