How much does unemployment pay in New Jersey?

Your weekly benefit rate is worked out from wage information your employers reported to NJDOL. Dependency benefits can raise it, and NJDOL names working part time and collecting a pension as factors that may reduce it.

How NJDOL sets your weekly rate from your base year

NJDOL pays 60% of the average weekly wage you earned during your base year, up to the maximum weekly benefit rate for that year. Those wages come from what your employers reported, covering the last 18 months.

Qualifying for benefits in 2026 takes at least $310 a week for 20 base weeks, or at least $15,500 in covered employment without 20 base weeks. The calendar quarters that make up your base year are set out on who qualifies in New Jersey.

What dependency benefits add

Dependency Benefits add 7% of your weekly benefit rate for the first dependent, and 4% for each of the next 2. That is the ceiling: 3 dependents add 15% in total, and more than 3 adds nothing. They are only for a weekly benefit rate below the maximum, and they can lift a rate no higher than that maximum.

NJDOL counts as a dependent an unemployed spouse or civil union partner, an unemployed unmarried child under 19 (or under 22 if the child attends school full time), or an unemployed unmarried disabled adult child whose blindness or disability began before age 22. If your spouse or civil union partner is employed during the week you establish your claim, you cannot receive Dependency Benefits.

The most one claim can pay

Your maximum benefit amount is the total the claim holds: the weeks you worked in the base year, up to 26, times your weekly benefit rate. NJDOL publishes these examples.

Whatever anyone worked or earned, the ceiling is 26 times the maximum weekly benefit rate: $23,530 for 2026, and $22,750 for 2025. How long benefits last covers how those weeks run out and what follows.

Weeks you work part time

Reduced hours do not end a claim, and a week with some work in it can still pay. You cannot work more than 80 percent of the hours normally worked in the job and collect for that week.

Earn 20 percent or less of your weekly benefit rate from an employer and you keep your full rate for that week. Earn more than that and the payment drops dollar for dollar against your gross wages.

NJDOL's example starts with a $500 weekly benefit rate. The partial weekly benefit rate is that rate plus 20 percent, which comes to $600 ($500 plus $100). Earn $200 in a week, and the payment is $400, the partial rate less what you earned.

What you report each week, and when, is on claiming weekly benefits.

If you collect a pension

New Jersey's unemployment law sets out what a pension does to a weekly payment. The benefits payable for a week are reduced, but not below zero, by the pension amount reasonably attributable to that week.

The rule covers a governmental or other pension, retirement or retired pay, an annuity, or another similar periodic payment based on your previous work. The reduced weekly benefit rate is computed to the next lower multiple of $1.00, and the reduction also lowers the maximum total benefits you can be paid during the benefit year.

If wages are missing from your rate

If NJDOL set your weekly benefit rate without wages an employer never reported, contact NJDOL for a monetary review. You will need to provide pay stubs as proof of your earnings.