Sushi Chef Pay in New Jersey and the Pay Transparency Law

Since 1 June 2025, New Jersey employers with 10 or more staff must publish a real pay range and a benefits summary in every job ad. Combine that with the state's $15.92 minimum wage and you have to put a defensible sushi chef number in writing before you can advertise. In Bergen and Hudson counties you are competing with Manhattan pay; in South Jersey, Philadelphia's lower cook pay still sits under a chef median above the national one. Counter chefs should be paid the full minimum wage, not a tip credit rate, since their tips rarely meet the FLSA's tipped-employee test.

1. Pay transparency: what the ad must say

New Jersey's pay transparency law (P.L. 2024, c.91, N.J.S.A. 34:6B-23) took effect 1 June 2025. It covers employers with 10 or more employees over any 20 calendar weeks that do business, hire or take applications in New Jersey, including out-of-state employers with New Jersey staff. Every posting for a new job or a transfer must state:

• the hourly wage or salary, or a range, and
• a general description of benefits and other compensation programs.

The department says this covers websites, print ads, email and social media, in any language. Employers must also make reasonable efforts to tell current staff in the affected department about promotion opportunities before filling them from outside.

New Jersey's 2026 minimum wage, from 1 January: $15.92 for most employers, $15.23 for seasonal employers and those with fewer than six staff, tipped cash wage $6.05 with a maximum tip credit of $9.87.

2. Three model ranges: North Jersey and South Jersey

There is no official New Jersey figure for sushi chefs specifically, and the state is not one labor market. Bergen, Hudson and Essex counties sit in the New York metro; Camden, Burlington and Gloucester sit in the Philadelphia metro. Our New York sushi chef guide reads advertised postings directly and gives $22 to $32 an hour for a sushi cook and $75,000 to $110,000 for a salaried head or sous sushi chef; a Fort Lee, Edgewater or Hoboken restaurant is drawing on the same candidates and should not undercut that range by much, because the commute the other way is easy.

For South Jersey, no equivalent sushi-specific reading exists, so scale the New York range by the ratio between the two metros' general cook pay, which BLS does publish: Philadelphia's cook median ($18.40/hr) sits about 12.5% below New York's ($21.03/hr). Applying that ratio gives a defensible, disclosed method rather than a guess:

Use these as a starting range to publish, not a fixed answer; a strong Fort Lee counter chef with a following can beat the top end. For statewide and metro BLS figures behind this, see the sources below.

3. The counter chef and the tip credit

New Jersey lets an employer pay a tipped worker the $6.05 cash wage plus up to $9.87 in tip credit, provided tips bring the worker to at least $15.92 an hour. The risk sits entirely with the employer: if tips fall short on any shift, you owe the difference.

Under the federal FLSA dual-jobs rule, an employee is a "tipped employee" only for work that customarily and regularly produces tips of at least $30 a month. A counter chef visible to guests has a stronger claim to that status than one working entirely out of sight, but most sushi chefs split time between counter service and prep the guest never sees, and pooled tips rarely trace back to one chef's work in a documentable way. The safer, more common practice is to pay sushi chefs the full minimum as kitchen staff and leave tip credit to servers, including a counter chef in a tip pool only if every participant is separately paid full minimum wage regardless of tips. See tip pooling rules for kitchen staff for the paperwork this requires.

4. Fort Lee, Edgewater and the Japanese community

Fort Lee and Edgewater, across the Hudson from Manhattan, have a real Japanese community, anchored by Mitsuwa Marketplace in Edgewater, one of the largest Japanese supermarket and food-hall complexes in the New York area, and by Japanese-language schools along the Route 4 and River Road corridor. We could not find a published resident or restaurant count for either town; MOFA reports the whole New York area as one figure, 38,251 Japanese nationals as of 1 October 2025, with no New Jersey breakdown.

Treat Fort Lee and Edgewater as part of the New York labor market, not a separate one. Advertise across the metro in English and Japanese, using the same channels a Manhattan restaurant would. A Japanese-speaking cook already in Bergen County may prefer a Fort Lee commute over Manhattan's, and a Japanese-language ad on a River Road community board reaches people a Craigslist post never will. See where Japanese chefs look for jobs abroad for the full channel list, including candidates still in Japan.

5. First year cost for one hire

Worked for a sushi counter cook hired locally at $58,000 a year (North Jersey range), no visa involved. If sponsoring from Japan, add the government fee table on budgeting an international chef hire.

6. Week by week to a start date

7. If you need to sponsor

There is no chef-specific US visa. A restaurant at least 50% owned by Japanese nationals usually moves fastest on E-2 for a chef in a supervisory or specialized role; see E-2 visas for Japanese restaurant staff. Otherwise compare O-1B, EB-3 and H-2B (useful for a seasonal Shore restaurant) on US visa options for restaurants. Every sponsored route runs to months, not weeks.

8. A job ad you can send, in English and Japanese

Post the same range and benefits in both languages, as the transparency law requires regardless of the ad's language:

General information gathered from official sources in September 2026, not legal or immigration advice. New Jersey's minimum wage changes every 1 January. Confirm current figures and your tip-pooling structure with counsel before publishing an offer.