Annual pay for the state’s 120 part-time legislators will jump 67% from $49,000 to $82,000, their first pay raise in two decades. (Photo by Dana DiFilippo/New Jersey Monitor)
By Dana DiFilippo
Reprinted with permission
New Jersey Monitor
New Jersey legislators will have more to celebrate after swearing in Tuesday than their brethren of past years — they’re getting a giant pay raise.
A controversial salary hike that the Democratic-led Legislature passed on the last day of its 2022-23 legislative session takes effect Tuesday, when a new two-year legislative session starts.
Annual pay for the state’s 120 part-time legislators will jump 67% from $49,000 to $82,000, with the Senate president and Assembly speaker each getting roughly $27,000 extra a year for their leadership roles. Every legislator gets $150,000 annually to pay their staff.
The legislative raises will cost taxpayers $9.8 million a year — $4 million a year more than previously.
Raises for New Jersey’s governor and lieutenant governor, which take effect with next week’s inauguration, are similarly eye-popping. Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill and Lt. Gov.-elect Dale Caldwell will make $210,000 each, up $35,000 from the $175,000 annual salaries Gov. Phil Murphy and Lt. Gov. Tahesha Way made.
Supporters of the salary hikes said lawmakers’ pay had stagnated since 2002 and should climb to keep up with the cost of living in one of the nation’s most expensive states. Legislators also have said they sometimes work outside of scheduled legislative days because of constituent services and other duties.
The law also hiked the salaries for 22 executive-branch officials, as well as the state Board of Public Utilities’ five commissioners, from $175,000 to $210,000 — although those raises began soon after Murphy signed the law in January 2024.
Critics had complained that the bumps would make New Jersey lawmakers among the highest paid in the nation, at a time of growing deficits and other budget challenges. Lawmakers passed a record-high $58.8 billion budget in June that included controversial cuts and budget diversions impacting colleges and universities, affordable housing, harm reduction work, and more.
New Jersey legislators now make more than any other state lawmakers outside of New York ($142,000), California ($128,000), Pennsylvania ($106,000), Illinois ($89,000), and Alaska ($84,000), according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
New York, California, and Pennsylvania have full-time legislatures, while Illinois and Alaska are considered “full-time lite,” which the conference defines as having fewer session days and smaller districts and staffs than truly full-time legislatures.
New Jersey’s part-time legislators typically hold other jobs and logged just 89 legislative days in 2025 and 90 in 2024.
Sherrill will be the ninth-highest-paid governor nationally, according to Business Insider.
