New Jersey's economy is still lagging the nation's, and it can't seem to catch up.

This winter, policymakers thought they might have caught a break:

Amazon was considering moving its new HQ2 headquarters to Newark; if the online retail giant came to the state, the move would help a struggling local economy by creating new jobs and attracting new investors, they said.

Gov. Murphy even went so far to to describe Newark's HQ2 bid as a "once in a lifetime opportunity."

Analysts and political leaders have described Newark as a one-of-a kind city perfect for Amazon's new home. They have boasted about the state's convenient transportation, its access to Manhattan and its research universities.

Despite the hype, it looks as though Amazon's HQ2 might land elsewhere -- and that doesn't come as a surprise.

Many early reports did not even rank Newark in the list of cities likely to become finalists. (Newark surpassed everyone's expectations and did indeed become a top 20 finalist).

But even if Newark were to become the home of Amazon's HQ2, would it really be that much of a boon?

Not everyone is convinced-- and in fact argue that the deal Newark offered Amazon is an extension of a policy that has done little to help New Jersey longterm, they said.

New Jersey's government has focused too much on luring large corporations by offering massive tax breaks, said Gordon MacInnes, director of New Jersey Policy Perspective, a left-leaning think tank.

And that strategy has not paid off, he said.

"We are in the bottom 20 percent of states for all sorts of metrics. And we are barely at the point of recovery with all of the jobs we lost in the recession," MacInnes said.

Many of the incentive packages have come out of Grow NJ -- a program run out of New Jersey's Economic Development Authority that gives companies tax breaks and other incentives for moving operations to New Jersey.

"We've relied on nothing else for economic growth over the past 10 years," MacInnes said.

The current Amazon deal would give the company up to $7 billion in tax credits for relocating to Newark --- an incentive that dwarfs the next largest package offered to a company in the state.

That's the $390 million given to Ameream LLC and Meadow Amusement in 2013 to develop the retail and entertainment American Dream complex. It's been under construction for 10 years.

Amazon is known for taking advantage of massive breaks in the U.S. On Thursday he slammed the company for not paying enough taxes, forcing the company's stock price to plummet.

I have stated my concerns with Amazon long before the Election. Unlike others, they pay little or no taxes to state & local governments, use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy (causing tremendous loss to the U.S.), and are putting many thousands of retailers out of business! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 29, 2018

On this score, the President might be right. In return for the tax breaks in New Jersey, Amazon said it would create as many as 50,000 jobs with an average compensation of $100,000 for its new headquarters. But those numbers are contingent upon how many people it transfers from its Seattle office.

The promise of new jobs is not necessarily enough to make any meaningful economic change in New Jersey, said Kasia Tarczynska, a research analyst with Good Jobs First, a national policy resource center in Washington.

Tarczynska said that often the policy of handing out massive incentive packages to corporations does not help unemployment and instead "pushes poverty around the state".

"The companies come in and they don't hire enough local people and so they have to move from these areas because prices increase," she said.

The Christie administration championed the tax break policy and focused on getting companies to move into Camden.

New Jersey has handed out a total of $8.9 billion in subsidies since 1996, most of them awarded since 2010 and ending up in Camden, according to data collected by Good Jobs First and analyzed by NJ Advance Media.

Tarczynska noted the data on the number of people employed on each project in New Jersey is incomplete because of a lack of transparency within the local government.

The economy there is still flailing, MacInnes said. That's because more than half of the jobs established in New Jersey over the past 10 years were already here, he said.

"Moving jobs around that are already here doesn't change our future," he said.

New Jersey needs to invest in the assets it already has, said Peter Kasabach, the executive director of New Jersey Future, a non-profit research and policy institute.

He said part of the reason Amazon may not move its headquarters to Newark is because the state has not done enough to focus on infrastructure, especially the transit system.

"We haven't been investing," MacInnes said. "We've been handing out tax cuts, and that is the problem."

Erin Banco may be reached at ebanco@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @ErinBanco. Find NJ.com on Facebook.