New Jersey Minimum Wage: Rates, Tip Credit, Dates

The first January I ran payroll for an hourly team in a state that indexes its minimum wage, I learned about the increase from an employee rather than from my own calendar. She had checked her own math before I checked mine, and her first check of the year was short. That conversation cost me more goodwill than the raise would have cost in payroll.

New Jersey is one of those states. The rate moves every January 1 whether or not anyone sends you a reminder, and it does not move as a single number. Five separate figures sit in the state schedule, and the one that binds your business depends on headcount, industry, and whether your people take tips.

This page gives you all five, sourced from the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development (NJDOL), along with the dates they change, how the tip credit works, and the payroll steps to take when a rate rises. It sticks to minimum wage on purpose, so you can find your number and get back to work.

What New Jersey Employers Must Pay Per Hour

The New Jersey minimum wage is $16.48 per hour for most employees from January 1, 2027, a 56-cent increase over the $15.92 that applies until then. The Department of Labor and Workforce Development published the 2027 rate on its September 2026 minimum wage chart, MW-570 (9/26), after announcing the 2026 rate on October 1, 2025.

Four other rates run alongside it, and each of them also changes on January 1, 2027. From that date, employers with fewer than six employees and seasonal employers pay $16.25. Farm workers paid hourly or by the piece get $15.00. Direct care staff at long-term care facilities get $19.48, which the statute sets at exactly $3.00 above the general rate. Tipped employees get a cash wage of $6.61.

That table is the department chart, published as MW-570 and reprinted on the required workplace poster. Its 2026 row holds the rates that apply until the new ones start. The full version back to 2020 is on the NJDOL minimum wage chart. Pull the current chart before you set January payroll each year rather than trusting a copy you saved.

The small employer test is stricter than a headcount taken on one convenient day, and it has two parts. Under the definition in the state Wage and Hour Law, N.J.S.A. 34:11-56a1, you need fewer than six employees on every working day during a majority of the workweeks this year. You also need fewer than six on every working day during at least 48 workweeks last year. Fail either part and the standard rate applies.

Part-time hours change none of these rates. New Jersey sets a rate per hour worked rather than per week, so someone scheduled eight hours a week is owed $16.48 an hour from January 1, 2027, exactly as a full-time employee is. The department puts most employees under minimum wage protection with only narrow exemptions, and overtime still begins after 40 hours of actual work in a seven-day workweek.

When the Rate Changes Next

The next increase lands on January 1, 2027, and the department has already published it: most employees move to $16.48, a 56-cent rise. That rise is the annual adjustment required by Article I, Paragraph 23 of the New Jersey Constitution, and the department posts the result each fall.

The adjustment is tied to the increase in the CPI-W, the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers, for the 12 months ending September 30. Two categories also carry a scheduled catch-up step set by statute, which is worth knowing if you run a small, seasonal, or farm operation. The table shows how each of the five rates moves.

The half-gap step for small and seasonal employers works out to 46 cents, because the statute measures from $15.00 and the 2026 general rate is $15.92. Add it to the 56-cent general increase and the $15.23 rate lands exactly on the published $16.25.

Budget for one more catch-up step on January 1, 2028, when the small employer rate merges with the general rate. A five-person shop takes a bigger jump than its larger neighbors in 2027 and 2028, and after that the gap is gone.

If you operate in more than one state, the pattern of annual indexed increases now reaches 14 states plus the District of Columbia.

Tipped Employees and the New Jersey Tip Credit

New Jersey allows a tip credit of up to $9.87 per hour, which leaves a required cash wage of $6.61 per hour from January 1, 2027. The department confirms the $6.61 cash figure in its wage and hour FAQ. Cash wage plus tips must reach $16.48 for every hour worked, and if tips fall short in a given workweek you owe the difference in cash.

One detail trips up employers more than any other. The $9.87 credit is written into the statute as a fixed dollar amount for 2024 and every year after, so it does not rise with inflation. When the state rate goes from $15.92 to $16.48 on January 1, 2027, the entire 56 cents lands on the cash wage, taking it from $6.05 to $6.61. Expect the same every January after that.

Tips are the property of the employee. The business cannot keep any portion of them, and a valid tip pool can only redistribute tips among employees.

City and County Minimum Wage Rates in New Jersey

There are none. New Jersey runs a single statewide schedule, and no city or county publishes its own general minimum wage for private employers. The rate in Newark is the rate in Jersey City is the rate in Cape May. The federal consolidated minimum wage table lists local rates for states that have them and lists none for New Jersey.

That last row is the one exception, and it is not a general wage floor. It reaches you only through a contract you sign with a public body, so read the contract terms if you do work for a New Jersey agency or municipality.

Industry Carve-Outs: Farms, Long-Term Care, Food Service

New Jersey has two genuine industry rates, plus one industry rate people expect to find that does not exist. Long-term care facility direct care staff have their own floor at $19.48 per hour from January 1, 2027, $3.00 above the general rate. Farm workers paid hourly or by the piece are on a slower schedule at $15.00 from the same date, converging with the general rate by 2030.

There is no fast food minimum wage in New Jersey. No wage council sets a separate rate for quick service restaurants the way one does in California, and no healthcare rate applies outside long-term care direct care roles. A fast food crew member in New Jersey earns the standard $16.48 from January 1, 2027, or the tipped structure if they customarily receive tips.

Food service, hotels and motels, first processing of farm products, and seasonal amusement do sit under state wage orders, which are rules in the New Jersey Administrative Code (N.J.A.C. 12:56-11.1 and following). Those orders do not create a lower number.

The wage orders confirm that employees in those occupations must be paid at least the statutory rate. That matters mostly because it closes the door on arguments that a seasonal boardwalk job falls outside the law.

Youth, Student, and Training Wages

New Jersey has no youth subminimum wage in the way employers usually imagine one. There is no lower teenage rate you can offer a 16-year-old in a shop or a kitchen. What the statute has instead is a set of exemptions and two reduced rates, all of them narrow.

The training wage is 90 percent of the applicable minimum, and it runs for the first 120 hours of work only. The conditions apply together under N.J.A.C. 12:56-3.4. The occupation must be one where the employee has no previous similar or related experience, and the employee must be enrolled in an established training program meeting the standards the state labor commissioner sets.

Two more training wage conditions bind you as the employer. You cannot use trainees to displace or cut the hours of current staff, and you must make a good faith effort to keep the employee on at the full rate afterward.

The student rate is a different animal. A college or university may pay a full-time student it enrolls at not less than 85 percent of the effective minimum wage, per the department summary of state wage and hour law. That rate belongs to the school as employer. It does not travel to a business that happens to hire a student.

On minors, the wage and hour abstract exempts workers under 18 from the statutory rate, then takes most of that exemption straight back. Minors working in food service, retail, beauty culture, laundry and cleaning, light manufacturing and apparel occupations are covered at the wage order rates, and vocational school graduates holding a special permit are covered at the statutory rate.

The covered occupations take in nearly every job a small business offers a teenager, so plan on paying the full rate and check the separate child labor rules on hours and permits.

The Minimum Wage Poster Requirement

New Jersey requires you to display the Wage and Hour Law Abstract, form MW-220, in a conspicuous and accessible place at every worksite, under N.J.S.A. 34:11-56a21. The poster carries the rate schedule, so the department issues a new edition when the numbers change.

At this page’s last check, the poster packet still carried MW-220 (1/26), which prints the rates through January 1, 2026. Watch for the edition that adds the 2027 row, and put it up before the new rate takes effect.

The current edition and every other required state posting are free from the NJDOL employer poster packet. Order printed copies at no charge from the Division of Wage and Hour Compliance if you would rather not print your own. Failing to post is its own violation, separate from any wage owed.

How the New Jersey Rate Relates to the Federal Floor

The federal minimum wage has been $7.25 per hour since July 24, 2009. The New Jersey rate of $16.48, effective January 1, 2027, sits $9.23 above it, so the state rate is the number you pay. Where a state rate exceeds the federal rate, the employer pays the higher one, and the federal rate becomes a floor that never comes into play in practice.

The state statute also contains a ratchet in the other direction. If Congress ever raises the federal minimum above the New Jersey rate, N.J.S.A. 34:11-56a4 lifts the state rate to the federal level and applies future CPI increases on top of the higher base. New Jersey employers would never fall back to a lower state number.

Federal law still governs plenty of what surrounds the rate: overtime, hours worked, recordkeeping, and the notice rules around a tip credit.

What to Do When a Rate Rises

Treat a rate change as a payroll project with four moving parts, not a single field to edit. The hourly rate is the visible one. The overtime rate, the salary basis check for anyone near the floor, and the poster all move with it.

Keep the calculation you ran. New Jersey wage claims reach back years, and the cheapest defense is a dated worksheet showing the rate you applied and the date you applied it.

If tracking who sits at which rate across a growing hourly team is the part that keeps slipping, that is the kind of thing FirstHR was built to hold. FirstHR is an onboarding and HR platform, not a payroll provider, so it keeps the employee record straight and hands your payroll process a clean set of facts.

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