Physician Assistant Salary in New Jersey 2026,
$165,690 Median | BLS Data by City

The published New Jersey figure is $165,690 a year, or $79.66 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025, with a band from $117,860 at the 10th percentile to $207,000 at the 90th. That is 21.9% above the national median of $135,880. Even the 10th percentile is a six-figure income, which is unusual and reflects a master's-level clinical credential in a high-cost, hospital-dense state.

It leads its own peer table. California publishes $165,650, Washington $164,360, Hawaii $164,050, New York $160,880 and Oregon $155,780 — all below New Jersey's $165,690. The usual explanation for high PA pay is a West Coast cost-of-living premium, and New Jersey achieves the same result through a dense hospital and multi-specialty group sector competing for a workforce of only 4,790 PAs statewide.

The State Board of Medical Examiners, within the Division of Consumer Affairs. Entry requires graduation from an ARC-PA accredited programme and NCCPA certification, and the board governs the collaborating physician relationship, the delegated scope of services and prescriptive authority including controlled dangerous substances registration. The board issues one PA licence — specialty practice in surgery, emergency medicine or elsewhere is a matter of employer credentialling and NCCPA specialty recognition, not a separate state permission.

Because the metros that would sit above it are not published as New Jersey areas. Atlantic City-Hammonton at $153,280 and Trenton-Princeton at $138,880 are the only New Jersey metros with a figure for this occupation; the hospitals and practices in the northern corridor and the south-west belong to the New York-Newark-Jersey City and Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington metropolitan areas, which BLS publishes as their own multi-state areas. The statewide $165,690 includes those PAs, which is why it is higher and why it is the figure to negotiate against.

A great deal — it is most of the distance from the $165,690 median to the $192,370 seventy-fifth percentile. Surgical first assisting, emergency medicine, critical care, cardiology and orthopaedics all carry procedural responsibility and call obligations that primary care does not, and New Jersey health systems pay for both. Because the State Board of Medical Examiners issues one undifferentiated licence, that specialisation is recognised by the employer's credentialling process and by NCCPA specialty certification rather than by the state.

Three factors combine. The state has a very dense hospital and multi-specialty group sector concentrated in a small geographic area, so employers compete directly rather than across regions. The PA workforce is small at 4,790 for a state of New Jersey's population, with a location quotient of 1.07 that is high but not extravagant. And New Jersey sits between two major metropolitan medical markets whose compensation levels set the local expectation — a New Jersey employer bidding for a PA is bidding against New York City and Philadelphia hospitals, not against a regional average. The result is a $165,690 median that edges past California's $165,650 despite very different labour market structures.

It means the demand risk in this career is unusually low. The pro-rated figure of about 350 openings a year in New Jersey is modest in absolute terms because the state workforce is small, but the national trajectory is what matters for a portable master's-level credential — and 20.4% over a decade is among the strongest of any occupation BLS projects. The mechanism is cost: health systems can staff primary, urgent and specialty care with PAs at a fraction of physician compensation, and margin pressure keeps pushing in that direction. The constraint is programme capacity, since every entrant needs an ARC-PA accredited master's degree and NCCPA certification.

As a specialty and setting ladder with an unusually high floor. The $117,860 tenth percentile is a new graduate in a primary care or outpatient role, which in most occupations would be the entry-level story but here is already a six-figure income. The $165,690 median is an established PA with a settled collaborating relationship. The $192,370 seventy-fifth percentile is where procedural specialties, surgical first assisting and emergency medicine sit, with call and overtime attached. The $207,000 ninetieth percentile is leadership of a system's advanced practice group or very high-volume specialty practice. New Jersey's board recognises none of these distinctions, which means every one of them is negotiated with the employer.