Sweeping changes to New Jersey Temporary Disability and Paid Family Leave Now Law
On February 19th 2019 Governor Murphy signed into law sweeping changes to New Jersey Temporary Disability and Paid Family Leave. Next year, employers will have to comply with significantly higher wage caps for premium calculations, as well as, increased benefit amounts and durations.effective 1/1/20, Taxable Wage cap will increase from current $34,400 per employee annually to estimated $70,500. For periods of disability commencing on or after July 1, 2020, an individual’s weekly benefit rate shall be 85%of the individual’s average weekly wage, to a maximum of 70% statewide average weekly wages. Using this calculation the maximum weekly disability benefits will increase from $650 to $858. The law also expands the definition of disability to include partial disability and reduces the size of employers that have to provide job protection from 50 employees to 30. Additionally, the law establishes new penalties for violations and compliance of the new TDI and FLI laws.
The bill states paying for the increased benefits will be the burden of the employee only, however exactly how this will be accomplished has not been finalized yet. To pass the projected increased costs only to employees the state may have to set up multiple wage caps, which is not addressed in the bill. The bill does not address this and may end up falling back on to the employer.
Contact New Century Benefits for our summary of the legislation, CYO cost estimates and how we are protecting our employers most important assets.
