NJ family leave law will be extended
Employees at smaller businesses to be eligible
By: Danial Munoz
NorthJersey.com
USA Today Network - New Jersey
..... Protections provided by New Jersey;s family leave law are being expanded to smaller businesses under legislation outgoing Governor Phil Murphy signed on Janaury17. [2026]
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Until the enactment of this bill, only employees at businesses with a minimum 30 workers were eligible for job=protected benefits under New Jersey's paid family leave program.
..... Now, with the law Murphy signed, part of Assembly Bill 3451, that benefit is being expanded to workers at businesses with at least 15 employees. In addition, the benefit will now be offered to an employee who has three months, down form a year.
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The bill goes into effect six months from its signing on January 17. [2026]
..... Family leave protections guarantee that a person in a business of at least 15 employees has to be reinstated at their job after they come back to work from the 12 weeks of family leave.
..... New Jersey's family leave law allows workers to use it to bond with a newly born child or a recently adopted child, or take care of a family member wit a serious health condition.
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"The number of pole helped by this bill reaches far beyond just the individual workers," reads a Saturday [01/17/2026] statement from one of the bill's sponsors, Assemblywomen Annette Quimano, D-Union.
More are using paid family leave
..... In 2019, when Murphy signed the first expansion of the family leave law, fewer than 47,000 people were filing family leave insurance claims -a number that increased to nearly 70,000 claims in 2023, according to figures maintained by the New Jersey Department of labor and Workforce Development.
....."The enrollment of paid family leave is increasing for both fathers and mothers, and parents are more likely to take paid family leave when a mandatory paid family leave policy is available," reads an October [2025] report by Andrea Hall and Slawa Rokicki, two researchers at the New Jersey State Policy Lab at Rutgers University.
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But a separate 2023 study by Rutgers' Heldrich Center for Workforce Development found that less than half of New Jersey workers - 47% - knew about paid family leave.
..... New Jersey lawmakers initially proposed an expansion of the benefit from businesses with 50 workers to five workers. but that met intense pullback from business lobbyists, who argued that the proposal would put strain on mom-and-pop, Main Street shops and cerate staffing gaps for businesses.
..... those employers already operate with thin margins and lack the flexibility afforded to larger businesses, the groups have argued.
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"While a threshold of 15 employees is better than five, 15 still sweeps up too many small businesses that will have to comply with the onerous new mandate," said Chris Emigholz, a lobbyist with the New Jersey Business and Industry Association.