What do you need to know to hire in New Jersey?
A bracketed state income tax topping out at 10.75%, a $15.92 wage floor, and the heaviest stack of employer leave duties in the region. Each New Jersey guide below takes one layer of state rule.
· New Jersey, United States guide
Illustration · Trenton, New Jersey
New Jersey stacks more employer obligations than any state in the region. Family Leave Insurance, Temporary Disability Insurance, a statewide earned-sick-leave law, a strong mini-WARN with mandatory severance, and the Law Against Discrimination all sit on top of the federal floor.
The pay math is its own work too. A bracketed income tax runs to 10.75% at the top, the minimum wage is $15.92 an hour, and unemployment insurance runs on a $44,800 wage base.
Most employers set up withholding and miss the leave-insurance contributions, or the sick-leave accrual that starts on day one. This page is the map; each guide is the detail.
What do you need to know to hire in New Jersey?
New Jersey runs the federal employment floor and then adds the most state law of any state in the region. There's a bracketed income tax to withhold, topping out at 10.75%, a $15.92 minimum wage, and three separate state leave programmes funded by payroll deduction.
Where New Jersey gets specific is leave: Family Leave Insurance, Temporary Disability Insurance, and a statewide earned-sick-leave law that accrues from the first hour worked. Each guide below takes one of those layers.
Sienna runs payroll for a 12-person team and just approved her first New Jersey hire. The federal stack she already knows still applies: Social Security and Medicare on every cheque, FUTA, and FMLA once the company passes 50 employees with 12 weeks of unpaid leave. New Jersey layers a bracketed state income tax, two state disability and family-leave funds, an earned-sick-leave mandate, and a strong mini-WARN on top.
Start from the United States overview for the federal baseline. This page is the New Jersey-specific layer, and the four guides below break it into the questions an employer actually asks before a first hire.
What does an employer actually pay in New Jersey?
The New Jersey-specific cost is unemployment insurance, Temporary Disability Insurance, and Family Leave Insurance, plus the federal pass-through and bracketed state withholding.
Unemployment insurance runs on a $44,800 taxable wage base. A new employer starts at 2.6825% on the UI line before the workforce-development add-ons, then moves to an experience-rated rate.
State income tax: a progressive, bracketed tax topping out at 10.75% on income over a million dollars. Minimum wage: $15.92 an hour for most employers, with $6.05 cash for tipped roles. Overtime: time and a half after 40 hours a week, no daily rule.
Unemployment insurance: a $44,800 wage base, 2.6825% on the UI line for a new employer. Leave funds: Temporary Disability Insurance pays up to $1,119 a week, Family Leave Insurance runs 12 weeks, and earned sick leave accrues to 40 hours a year. Final pay: by the next regular payday.
Sources: NJ DOL 2026 minimum wage and US DOL state minimum wage.
The figures above are the headline. The detail, from withholding setup to the SUTA filing cadence, the TDI and FLI contribution split, and the exempt-salary threshold, sits in the New Jersey tax and unemployment guide and the wage and overtime guide.
The New Jersey guides, one layer at a time
Four New Jersey guides are live, one per layer of state rule. Each answers the questions an employer asks before the first hire, with the statutory numbers pulled from the same New Jersey source set.
State income tax & unemployment insurance
The bracketed income tax to 10.75%, the $44,800 SUTA wage base, the 2.6825% new-employer UI line, and the quarterly filing rhythm.
Wage, overtime & meal break law
The $15.92 state floor, the 40-hour overtime week, the $6.05 tipped cash wage, and the break rules that apply.
Paid family & sick leave
Family Leave Insurance at 12 weeks, Temporary Disability Insurance to $1,119 a week, and earned sick leave accruing to 40 hours a year.
Termination & at-will exceptions
The Law Against Discrimination, the mini-WARN with mandatory severance, the next-payday final-pay rule, and the federal WARN math on a mass layoff.
The New Jersey worker-classification guide, the state's ABC test for employee versus contractor, is the next one we're building. Need it sooner? Tell us and we'll move it up the queue.
How does New Jersey compare to its neighbours?
New Jersey carries the heaviest employer-obligation load in the region, but each neighbour breaks the pattern somewhere. The federal floor is identical; the state layer is not.
Cross a state line and the math changes. New York runs its own paid-family-leave and disability funds and a higher minimum wage in the metro counties. Pennsylvania sits at the federal wage floor with a flat income tax and no state leave programme. Delaware is phasing in its own paid-leave fund but starts from a lighter base than New Jersey.
If you're hiring across the region, read each state's guides before you set payroll. The structure is the same everywhere; the SUTA base, the leave mandates, and the termination rules are not.
How does Teamed hire in New Jersey for you?
Teamed becomes your legal employer of record in New Jersey for $599 per employee per month, flat, with zero FX mark-up in any currency. Payroll, the unemployment registration, the TDI and FLI contributions, the earned-sick-leave accrual, and the federal stack run on one platform.
There's no setup fee and no exit fee, and statutory employer cost passes through at cost, itemised on every invoice.
Real HR and legal experts handle your New Jersey hires, from the first offer letter to a contested termination. An actual person, not a chatbot or a pooled queue, who knows the Law Against Discrimination and the mini-WARN severance math. There's no setup fee and no exit fee, the platform tracks every state and federal trigger in real time, and statutory employer cost passes through at cost, itemised on every invoice.
Contractor onboarding, EOR payroll, and entity setup live on one platform. A New Jersey contractor who converts to W-2 keeps their record, and that same employee can graduate from EOR to your own US entity without re-onboarding. Run the Crossover Calculator to see the month the model flips. EOR is the right model for a first New Jersey hire, until it isn't.
New Jersey is the state employers under-budget. It stacks Family Leave Insurance, Temporary Disability Insurance, earned sick leave and a mandatory-severance mini-WARN on top of a bracketed income tax. These guides exist so the first New Jersey hire never becomes the first missed contribution.
New Jersey carries more employer duties than any state near it. Family Leave Insurance, Temporary Disability, earned sick leave, a mini-WARN with severance.
Set up withholding and you are still only halfway. The leave funds start the day the first cheque runs.
Read the right New Jersey guide before the first hire, not after the first missed deduction.
