Laravel 5.6 - jQuery not working

I am trying to use jquery in a Laravel 5.6 project blade template like this..

<script>
$(document).ready(function(){
    $("p").click(function(){
        $(this).hide();
    });
});
</script>

This is giving me an error message...

Uncaught ReferenceError: $ is not defined

Is jQuery automatically included or do I need to include it manually?

via Chebli Mohamed