Newton
Municipality · Sussex County
69 people are enrolled in a State pension fund through Newton, reporting a median pensionable salary of $69,604.
Newton, a municipality in Sussex County, operates under New Jersey's Title 11A civil service system rather than setting its own hiring rules independently.
Within Sussex County, 17 local government entities in total carry this same confirmed status.
About municipalities in New Jersey
New Jersey has 564 municipalities, and each one decides for itself whether to operate under Title 11A. A municipality that adopts civil service hires and promotes employees through competitive exams administered by the state; one that hasn't sets its own local hiring rules instead.
Newton Police Department — discipline and transparency records via PoliceTransparencyNJ
See all 17 civil service jurisdictions in Sussex County, or browse the full employer directory.
Who is on the pension rolls at Newton
69 people are enrolled in a State-administered pension fund through Newton. That is a count of active memberships reported by the employer, not a payroll headcount: anyone not enrolled in one of these funds does not appear in this data at all, and no separate headcount for a New Jersey local employer is published anywhere we can check against.
| Fund | Name | Members | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| PERS | Public Employees' Retirement System | 46 | 67% |
| PFRS | Police and Firemen's Retirement System | 23 | 33% |
Within PFRS, the fund records 23 police officers. PFRS enrolment is the only occupational detail this dataset carries; it lists no job titles, so nothing here says which civil service titles Newton actually appoints.
2 of these members hold a second public job in New Jersey: their reported salary across all public employers exceeds what they are paid here. Shared and part-time appointments are common in local government, and the salary figures below count only the portion earned at Newton.
Pensionable salary at Newton
Half of the pension-enrolled workforce at Newton reports a pensionable salary above $69,604 and half below, across 69 members with a reported figure.
| Point in the distribution | Pensionable salary |
|---|---|
| 10th percentile | $42,593 |
| 25th percentile | $56,353 |
| Median | $69,604 |
| 75th percentile | $86,372 |
| 90th percentile | $115,387 |
The range runs from the 10th to the 90th percentile because the extremes are not informative: the lowest reported figures belong to part-time and partial-year members, whose credited salary is a fraction of a full-time equivalent.
Among the 13 civil service jurisdictions in the same county with pension data, that median sits at the 69th percentile, above the county's midpoint of $63,156. Against the 194 bodies of the same kind statewide, it sits at the 38th percentile.
These figures are pensionable salary reported to the NJ Division of Pensions and Benefits for the four most recent quarters, not total pay and not take-home pay. Snapshot of March 31, 2026. How we compile this.
How long people stay at Newton
The median enrolled member at Newton has 8.3 years of credited service, with the middle half falling between 5.3 and 19.8 years. 25% have passed twenty years, which matters locally because retirement eligibility and the pension formula both turn on service credit.
| Credited service | Members | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Under 5 years | 17 | 25% |
| 5 to 10 years | 21 | 30% |
| 10 to 15 years | 6 | 9% |
| 15 to 20 years | 8 | 12% |
| 20 to 25 years | 7 | 10% |
| 25 years or more | 10 | 14% |
Membership tier records which pension rules a member was hired under, so the mix is a rough picture of how recently a workforce turned over. At Newton, 35% sit in the most recently hired cohort.
| Membership tier | Members | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Tier 1 (longest-serving cohort) | 21 | 30% |
| Tier 2 | 2 | 3% |
| Tier 3 | 22 | 32% |
| Tier 5 (most recently hired cohort) | 24 | 35% |
Other public employers in Newton
The pension system reports these separate public employers in Newton. Each is its own employer for pension purposes, and only some are civil service jurisdictions — school boards, charter schools and parking authorities are ordinary public employers that were never part of Title 11A. Names link only where the body appears in this directory.
| Employer | Enrolled members |
|---|---|
| NEWTON BD OF ED | 237 |
| NEWTON TOWN (this page) | 69 |
What civil service status means for jobs at Newton
In a municipality that operates under Title 11A, the mayor, administrator or governing body still decides which positions exist and who gets appointed to them. What changes is the route in. Most permanent positions have to be filled from a list of candidates who took and passed an open competitive examination.
That flips the usual job hunt around. For a competitive title you announce yourself by filing for the exam when it is posted, not by dropping a resume at the municipal building. Municipal employers also run the widest mix of titles in this directory: police and fire, public works and sanitation, code enforcement and construction inspection, tax collection, clerical support, recreation, and dispatch.
Your title, not your assignment, defines what you are supposed to be doing. If the duties you actually perform drift outside the specification for the title you hold, that is a classification question rather than a management preference, and an employee can ask for the position to be reviewed and reclassified. It is one of the quieter protections in the system and one of the least used.
New Jersey does not require an employer to hire whoever scored highest. When a list is certified, the appointing authority may choose among the top three interested candidates, which is why a rank of two or three on a list is still a serious position and why interviews still decide outcomes.
Civil service employers in Newton
Newton Town appears in the Commission's listing in its own right, so the town government is the appointing authority for its own classified staff.
Nothing else in Newton appears alongside it. No library board, fire district, utilities authority or housing authority here holds separate status, which means every local job in Newton that falls under Title 11A is a job with the town government itself.
Civil service titles used by New Jersey municipalities
Real classifications that New Jersey municipalities draw on, each linked to its official specification: the definition of the work, the requirements, and any licence the title depends on. A sample of the system rather than a roster or a list of openings.
Civil service coverage across Sussex County
Sussex County holds 17 confirmed jurisdictions in the Commission's listing: 12 municipalities, 3 boards of health, 1 county government, and 1 public library.
12 of the county's 24 municipalities are among them.
Sussex County is a jurisdiction too, though a county's decision does not bind the towns, authorities, libraries or districts inside it.
Also in the directory: Sparta Library, Sparta Township, Stanhope Borough, Stillwater Township, Vernon Township, Vernon Township Board of Health, Wantage Township, Andover Board of Health. See all 17 in Sussex County.
Common questions about Newton
Is Newton a civil service employer?
Yes. Newton appears in the New Jersey Civil Service Commission's listing of local civil service system jurisdictions as of July 2024, which makes it an appointing authority under Title 11A. Permanent appointments to competitive titles there come from eligible lists the Commission certifies, rather than from purely local hiring.
Is the job specification the same everywhere?
Yes, and that is the point of the classification system. A title has one specification statewide, covering the definition of the work, the education and experience requirements, and any licence the title depends on. That is what makes experience gained at one civil service employer legible to another, even in a different county.
Is there always a written test?
No. New Jersey runs both assembled examinations, where candidates are scheduled to sit a test, and unassembled ones, where a reviewer scores your education and experience against the requirements in the specification and there is no test day at all. The announcement says which kind it is. For an unassembled examination the application itself is the examination, so how fully you describe your experience is the score.
How many Newton employees are in a State pension system?
69 active memberships are reported through Newton, split across 46 in PERS and 23 in PFRS. This counts pension enrolment rather than payroll, so employees who are not in one of these funds are not included.
What is the median pensionable salary at Newton?
$69,604, with the middle half of members between $56,353 and $86,372. These figures are pensionable salary reported to the NJ Division of Pensions and Benefits for the four most recent quarters, not total pay and not take-home pay. It excludes overtime and most supplemental pay, and it is before tax, before the member's own pension contribution and before health premiums.
How does pay at Newton compare with the rest of Sussex County?
Its median pensionable salary of $69,604 sits at the 69th percentile among the 13 civil service jurisdictions in Sussex County with pension data, where the midpoint jurisdiction reports $63,156. Local pay is set by ordinance rather than a State schedule, so spreads inside one county are wide.
How long do people stay at Newton?
The median enrolled member has 8.3 years of credited service, and 25% have passed twenty years. Credited service drives both retirement eligibility and the pension formula, so a long-tenured workforce usually means fewer open competitive appointments in the near term.