NEWARK --It is, by any measure, an astonishing offer.

On Monday, New Jersey put a deal worth up to $7 billion in tax credits on the table to lure Amazon to the Garden State.

If the company picks New Jersey as the site to develop its new HQ2 headquarters, the deal would become the second-largest economic development package ever offered to a company in the U.S., an NJ Advance Media study found.

The $7 billion incentive would dwarf the highest subsidy held by a company in New Jersey -- $390 million given to Ameream LLC and Meadow Amusement in 2013 to develop the retail and entertainment American Dream complex, which has been under construction in the Meadowlands in East Rutherford for more than 10 years.

The offer, announced by officials during a news conference Monday, is New Jersey's latest attempt to entice a corporation to the state by handing out massive tax breaks. 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 released by Good Jobs First, a national policy resource center in Washington.

It is difficult to know whether the investments, including those in Camden have paid off because a lot of the information needed to make that determination, such as the number of jobs created per subsidy awarded, is not always accessible, said Kasia Tarczynska, a research analyst with the center.

"There is a real issue with transparency on all kinds of subsidies throughout the country," she said.

So far, analysts looking at potential Amazon sites have not included New Jersey as a potential front runner for the Amazon headquarters and Amazon is not commenting on any of the bids.

And though it is not known how much other bidders are offering Amazon in incentive packages, New Jersey's $7 billion deal is likely to be the highest, analysts say.

"New Jersey is the only state that came out with its number. I don't think we would have done it that way if we were managing this, but I get it, they wanted to make a splash," said Peter Kasabach, the executive director of New Jersey Future, a non-profit research and policy institute. "Such an extreme position might not be a bad gamble."

The dollar amount New Jersey put forward comes just behind the $8.7 billion Boeing received from Washington back in 2013.

While most states in the U.S. use subsidies as a way to attract corporations, New Jersey is one of the few that frequently taps into just one source of funding, Grow NJ, a tax-incentive program overseen by the state's Economic Development Authority aimed at attracting businesses to some of the most economically depressed cities.

Analysts say the payoff is not always enough.

"One of the most disturbing things about New Jersey's experience with these tax subsidies over the past eight years, is that we have ratcheted up the generosity from the taxpayers to corporations over time," said Jon Whiten, vice president New Jersey Policy Perspective, a left-leaning think tank. "We've just continued to give away more and more and get less and less in return. And what they are proposing (for Amazon) would blow the lid off of that entirely."

Whiten said when the Philadelphia 76ers moved its practice facility to Camden, and received $82 million in tax credits, the team promised to bring 250 jobs to the state.

"All of those jobs were considered new for New Jersey but when the team came here we found out they were all already filled," Whiten said.

If Amazon decides to come to the state, the legislature would first have to vote on whether to get rid of a requirement that the Grow NJ tax incentives be used only to attract businesses to some of the state's most economically depressed cities, specifically Camden, Passaic, Paterson and Trenton.

Amazon has a growing presence in New Jersey. It came to the state in 2012 and currently operates seven different facilities, most fulfillment centers, with an additional three in the development stage.

Amazon has received government subsidies in the past. Its subsidiary, Audible, the audiobook company in Newark, earned just over $39 million from the Grow NJ assistance program in 2015 to create a new technology center in the city. As of April, Amazon employed about 13,000 people in the state.

It is unclear how many jobs will be available to New Jersey residents if the company decides to move its headquarters to the state.

"We're very concerned that the state and now Newark as well are essentially giving away the store in order to try and get Amazon here," Whiten said. "What kind of employment opportunity are they actually providing? That's something that we don't know."

Amazon said it would create as many as 50,000 jobs with an average compensation of $100,000, but that number is contingent upon how many people it transfers from its Seattle office.

Joe Parilla, a fellow at the Brooking Institution's Metropolitan Policy Program, said Amazon executives have hinted at the idea that they will transfer people from Seattle, which would lower the number of jobs available to New Jersey residents.

"They want to give their workers more choice of where to go to live," Parilla said. "The cost of living in Seattle is getting expensive for Amazon employees. Living in downtown Seattle is OK for 20-somethings but for a person in their 40s trying to start a family, they want the option to move somewhere where the cost of living isn't so high."

Moving to the Newark metropolitan area wouldn't offer much of a relief for Seattle employees. The cost of living in the Newark area is only slightly lower than Seattle, according to Sperling's, a demographic analysis firm.

Virginia Pellerin at the New Jersey Economic Development Authority, the state agency responsible for administering incentive programs, said the subsidies are performance-based, meaning the company does not receive the subsidy until it has certified that all commitments made at the time of approval of a project have been met, including job creation and retention, and capital investment.

The $7 billion offered up to Amazon will come in the form of tax credits, but if the company's break for any given year is larger than the amount of corporate tax it owes, it can sell the remaining credits to another company or shift it to one of its subsidiaries.

"But it's not a blank check," said Kasabach. "What we don't know is if that money Amazon will get will go into its own account or if we will see this as money be used to invest in a place that we (New Jersey) want to improve."

Amazon has said it wants to build its headquarters in a city with well-functioning and widespread access to transportation, a skilled and technical workforce, a combination of research universities and computer programs, and space to build a 500,000-square foot office.

New Jersey has most of what Amazon is looking for, but the state could use part of what it has offered Amazon in subsidies to further develop the sectors the company is interested in accessing, Parilla said.

"It is better in the public interest to structure (the subsidies) as investments so they are benefiting workers and communities," Parilla said. "Instead of doing a $1 billion property tax abatement, you could structure investments in the things we know Amazon cares about as well."

But when governments invest in places, rather than people, it can often "push a city's poverty problem somewhere else," Tarczynska said.

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