NJ Labor Laws: Minimum Wage, Overtime, Leave, and Wage Claims

New Jersey labor laws set a $15.92 hourly minimum wage in 2026, require overtime after 40 hours in a week, guarantee paid sick leave to nearly every worker, protect family and medical leave through state and federal programs, and let workers recover up to triple the wages they are owed when an employer shorts them.¹ The protections reach further than federal law in several areas, and they apply to employers of every size when it comes to discrimination and sick leave.

Minimum Wage in 2026

The standard minimum wage is $15.92 per hour as of January 1, 2026.¹ A few groups of workers are on separate schedules:

Seasonal employers and businesses with fewer than six employees: $15.23 per hour, with their rate scheduled to catch up to the standard minimum by 2028.²
Agricultural workers: $14.20 per hour, climbing to parity by 2030.³
Tipped employees: a cash wage of at least $6.05 per hour, with tips required to bring total hourly earnings up to the full minimum. If tips fall short, the employer must make up the difference.⁴

The rate adjusts automatically each year based on the Consumer Price Index.³

Overtime Pay

New Jersey requires overtime at one and one-half times your regular hourly rate for every hour worked beyond 40 in a single workweek.⁵ Each seven-day period stands on its own. Employers cannot average hours across two weeks to avoid paying overtime, which trips up a lot of restaurant and construction employers whose schedules swing.

Some workers are exempt. New Jersey follows the federal definitions for executive, administrative, and professional employees, which require a salary of at least $684 per week ($35,568 per year) plus duties that meet the federal white-collar tests.⁶ Farm workers, hotel employees, motor bus common-carrier employees, and limousine drivers are also exempt from the overtime requirement.

The cost of getting this wrong is steep. Under the Wage Theft Act, a worker can recover liquidated damages of up to 200 percent of unpaid wages, plus attorney’s fees and court costs.⁷ A $5,000 shortfall can become a $15,000 recovery.

When and How You Must Be Paid

Most employees must be paid at least twice per calendar month on regular, pre-announced paydays. The end of a pay period can be no more than 10 working days before its payday, and if a payday falls on a day the workplace is closed, payment must come the preceding work day.⁸ Executive, supervisory, and professional employees may be paid monthly instead, as long as the schedule is consistent.

Deductions from your paycheck are limited to what state or federal law allows: taxes, court-ordered garnishments, and similar obligations. Employers cannot dock pay for breakages, cash-register shortages, or uniforms unless a specific regulation permits it.

When your job ends, whether you quit or are fired, the employer must pay all remaining wages no later than the next regular payday. A labor dispute can push the deadline out to the following payday for workers involved in the dispute.

Earned Sick Leave

The New Jersey Earned Sick Leave Law covers almost every worker in the state — full-time, part-time, temporary — regardless of employer size. You accrue one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours worked, up to 40 hours per benefit year. You can carry over up to 40 unused hours into the next year, though employers do not have to let you use more than 40 hours in any single year.⁹

Permitted uses are broad:¹⁰

Diagnosis, treatment, recovery, or preventive care for your own physical or mental health.
The same kinds of care for a family member.
Needs related to domestic or sexual violence, including medical attention, counseling, legal proceedings, relocation, or obtaining a restraining order.
School conferences, meetings, or events related to a child’s education, health, or disability.
Public-health emergencies, including workplace or school closures ordered by a public official, quarantine situations, or a governor-declared state of emergency.

Retaliating against you for using sick leave is itself a violation. Being written up or losing hours after a legitimate sick day gives you a separate claim.

Family Leave and Disability Benefits

Two different systems work together: one keeps your job open, the other pays you.

Job Protection: The NJ Family Leave Act

The New Jersey Family Leave Act gives eligible employees 12 weeks of job-protected leave in any 24-month period to bond with a new child or care for a family member with a serious health condition.¹¹ You qualify if you have worked for the employer for at least 12 months and at least 1,000 hours during that period, and the law applies to employers with 30 or more employees.¹² When you come back, the employer must restore you to your old job or an equivalent one.

One important limit: the NJFLA does not cover leave for your own medical condition. For that, you look to the federal Family and Medical Leave Act, which provides up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave for your own serious health condition in addition to family caregiving and bonding.¹³ When both laws cover the same absence, the leave generally runs at the same time rather than stacking.

Cash Benefits During Leave

Neither the state nor federal job-protection laws require your employer to pay you while you are out. Pay comes from two state insurance programs funded through payroll deductions. Family Leave Insurance (FLI) covers bonding and family caregiving. Temporary Disability Insurance (TDI) covers your own non-work-related illness, injury, or pregnancy.

To qualify for benefits in 2026, you need to have earned at least $15,500 during any one-year base period in the preceding 18 months, or worked at least 20 base weeks with earnings of at least $310 per week.¹⁴ The employee FLI contribution rate for 2026 is 0.23 percent of taxable wages.¹⁵

Discrimination and Retaliation

The New Jersey Law Against Discrimination (LAD) is one of the broadest state statutes in the country. It applies to employers of all sizes, with no minimum employee count, unlike the 15-employee threshold under federal Title VII.¹⁶

Protected characteristics include:¹⁶

Race, color, national origin, ancestry, and nationality.
Sex, pregnancy, breastfeeding, gender identity, and gender expression.
Sexual orientation, marital status, civil union status, and domestic partnership status.
Religion and creed.
Age, with no minimum floor — federal age discrimination law only protects workers 40 and older.
Disability, genetic information, and atypical hereditary cellular or blood traits.
Military service liability.

Retaliation is also prohibited. If you file a complaint, participate in an investigation, or oppose discriminatory conduct, your employer cannot fire you, reduce your hours, or take any other adverse action in response. Complaints go to the New Jersey Division on Civil Rights, or you can file a lawsuit directly in state court.

Employee or Independent Contractor

New Jersey uses the ABC Test to decide whether a worker is an employee or an independent contractor. The law presumes you are an employee, and the hiring entity has to prove all three of the following to classify you otherwise:¹⁷

You are free from the company’s control over how you perform the work, both on paper and in practice.
The work is either outside the company’s usual business or performed outside all of the company’s locations.
You are genuinely operating an independently established trade or business of your own.

Fail one prong, and you are an employee. Misclassification is a serious enforcement priority in New Jersey, and an employer that gets it wrong owes back unemployment contributions, disability insurance, overtime, and earned sick leave.¹⁸ You can be an employee under the state’s ABC Test while the IRS still treats you as an independent contractor for federal tax purposes — the two tests are different, and New Jersey’s is stricter.

Whistleblower Protection Under CEPA

The Conscientious Employee Protection Act (CEPA) prohibits employers from retaliating against workers who:¹⁹

Report or threaten to report a violation of law, regulation, or public policy to a supervisor or public body.
Provide information or testify in an investigation about an employer’s illegal conduct.
Refuse to participate in activity the employee reasonably believes is illegal, fraudulent, or a threat to public health, safety, or the environment.
Report fraud or misrepresentation to shareholders, customers, patients, or government entities.

Before going to an outside public body, you generally have to raise the issue with a supervisor in writing first and give the employer a reasonable chance to fix it. That step is waived if management already knows about the problem, or if you face a risk of physical harm in an emergency. Employers with 10 or more employees must distribute a written CEPA notice at least once a year.

Mass Layoff Notice and Severance

New Jersey’s version of the WARN Act applies to employers with at least 100 employees nationwide, counting full-time and part-time workers alike. A triggering event occurs when 50 or more employees who report to any New Jersey location are terminated within a 30-day period, and layoffs within a 90-day window can be combined.

Covered employers must give 90 days of advance written notice before a mass layoff or plant closing. They also owe one week of severance for each year of service to every affected employee, paid automatically without requiring a release of claims. If the employer skips the required 90 days of notice, an additional four weeks of severance is added on top of that.

Filing a Wage Claim

If your employer has shorted your pay, you can file a wage complaint with the New Jersey Department of Labor’s Division of Wage and Hour Compliance.²⁰ You will need details about your employer, the amount owed, and the pay periods in question. Online filing is faster than paper.²¹

An investigator reviews the evidence, contacts the employer, and often convenes a hearing where both sides present documentation. If the department finds a violation, it can order the employer to pay what is owed plus administrative penalties of up to $250 for a first violation and $500 for later ones.⁷

You can also file a civil lawsuit, either instead of or alongside the administrative complaint. In court, you can recover the full amount of unpaid wages plus liquidated damages of up to 200 percent of what you are owed, along with attorney’s fees.⁷ The statute of limitations is six years, extended from two years by the 2019 Wage Theft Act. Many workers do not realize they have been underpaid until well after the fact, and six years of back pay adds up fast.

Retaliation for filing a wage complaint is a separate violation with its own penalties. If your employer fires you, cuts your hours, or takes any other adverse action because you filed a claim, you have a second claim on top of the wage case.

1
State of New Jersey. Wage and Hour Compliance FAQs for Workers
2
Department of Labor & Workforce Development. New Jersey Minimum Wage to Increase on January 1
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Department of Labor & Workforce Development. New Jersey Minimum Wage Increase Announcement
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New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development. My Work Rights – Tipped Workers
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State of New Jersey. New Jersey State Wage and Hour Laws and Regulations
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U.S. Department of Labor. Earnings Thresholds for the Executive, Administrative, and Professional Employee Exemptions
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New Jersey State Legislature. S1790 3R – NJ Wage Theft Act
8
Justia. New Jersey Code 34-11-4.2 – Time and Mode of Payment
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New Jersey State Legislature. New Jersey Earned Sick Leave Law
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Justia. New Jersey Code 34-11D-3 – Permitted Uses of Earned Sick Leave
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Justia. New Jersey Code 34-11B-4 – Family Leave
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New Jersey Office of the Attorney General. New Jersey Code 34-11B-1 – Family Leave Act
13
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 28 – The Family and Medical Leave Act
14
Division of Temporary Disability and Family Leave Insurance. How Alternate Base Years Are Calculated
15
Prudential. NJ TDI and FLI 2026 Updates on Disability and Family Leave
16
New Jersey Office of the Attorney General. New Jersey Law Against Discrimination
17
Division of Employer Accounts. For Employers – Independent Contractors vs. Employees
18
New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development. Independent Contractors and Misclassification
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New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development. Conscientious Employee Protection Act Poster
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New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development. Wage and Hour Compliance – File a Wage Complaint
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New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development. NJ Division of Wage and Hour Compliance – Claims