Since June 2026, every job posting in New Brunswick, public or internal, has had to show its salary. That single change, brought in by the Pay Transparency Act, says a lot about the year the province has had. Between new pay rules, a complete rethink of sick leave and updated workers’ compensation thresholds, the Employment Standards Act (ESA) that employers knew in 2024 has grown some significant new branches.

None of it is unmanageable. The ESA remains a clear set of minimum standards covering wages, overtime, vacation, public holidays and termination, and once you know where the 2026 changes landed, keeping your policies current becomes routine rather than reactive.

This guide walks through the full framework: who the ESA covers, what you must pay and when, how vacation and holiday entitlements accrue, the leave rules that changed this year and what proper notice looks like when employment ends.

Want the whole framework condensed into a page your team can check before every hire, pay run and departure?

Overview of the New Brunswick Employment Standards Act (ESA)

The ESA sets out the minimum standards, workplace rights and responsibilities of employers and employees in New Brunswick. It covers most workers and provincially regulated workplaces in the province, and it draws no lines between types of employment. Part-time, full-time, casual, seasonal and construction workers are all entitled to the same minimum employment rights under the Act, per the Government of New Brunswick.

A few groups sit outside it:

• Independent contractors are not covered.
• People who work in a private home directly for the homeowner, such as babysitters, home care workers and construction workers hired by the homeowner, are exempt.
• Individuals providing agricultural services to small family farms are exempt.

There’s also a federal layer. Employees in federally regulated industries fall under the Canada Labour Code rather than the provincial ESA. That list includes railways, pipelines, ferries, radio and TV, banks, cable systems, extra-provincial trucking and shipping, federal Crown corporations and many First Nation activities.

One persistent myth deserves correcting: there is no requirement under the New Brunswick Employment Standards Act to post a copy of the Act in the workplace. The posting requirement employers half-remember belongs to the Occupational Health and Safety Act.

One development on the hiring front: Bill 14, passed in June 2025, amended the Fair Registration Practices in Regulated Professions Act to improve labour mobility. Out-of-province professionals can now begin working in New Brunswick immediately while their registration is being processed, which shortens the runway considerably when you’re recruiting regulated talent from elsewhere in Canada.

Minimum wage, overtime and payment rules

The minimum wage in New Brunswick is $15.90 per hour. That’s the absolute lowest amount an employer can legally pay for an hour of work in the province.

If your business is federally regulated, a different floor applies: the federal minimum wage increased to $18.15 per hour on 1 April 2026, and federally regulated private-sector employers operating in New Brunswick must pay it.

Overtime in New Brunswick kicks in after 44 hours in a week, and the minimum overtime rate is 1.5 times the minimum wage. A quirk that surprises employers arriving from other provinces: banking overtime is not permitted in New Brunswick. Extra hours can’t be stockpiled as future time off. They’re paid in the pay period they’re earned, full stop.

Then there’s the change reshaping how the province hires. Under Bill 24, the Pay Transparency Act, in effect since June 2026:

• Employers must include the expected salary or hourly wage, or a range, in both publicly advertised and internal job postings.
• Employers are prohibited from seeking an applicant’s compensation history.
• Past compensation cannot be relied on for hiring or compensation decisions.

Pay reporting requirements for employers with 50 or more employees will phase in by March 2028, so larger businesses have a runway to build their reporting muscle now.

One more figure for the payroll file: as of January 2026, WorkSafeNB increased the maximum assessable earnings for workers’ compensation to $85,800. That’s the cap used to calculate wage-loss benefits and the maximum earnings per worker on which employers pay premiums.

Vacation time and vacation pay regulations

An employee becomes entitled to an annual vacation after 12 months of employment, and both the time and the pay grow with service.

New Brunswick vacation entitlement by years of service

The percentages apply to gross wages, which keeps the math honest for variable-hour staff: someone who worked more earns more vacation pay, automatically. That same logic answers one of the most common questions employers ask about casual and part-time staff, covered in detail in do part-time employees get vacation pay.

New Brunswick’s two-tier structure is on the leaner side nationally, and if you employ across provinces the differences add up quickly. The vacation entitlement by province comparison lays out every jurisdiction side by side.

Paid public holidays in New Brunswick

New Brunswick has eight paid public holidays, days when qualifying employees are entitled to a paid day off:

• New Year’s Day
• Family Day
• Good Friday
• Canada Day
• New Brunswick Day
• Labour Day
• Remembrance Day
• Christmas Day

To qualify for a paid public holiday, an employee generally needs at least 90 calendar days of employment during the previous 12 months. Employees who don’t qualify for holiday pay aren’t left out entirely: if they work on the holiday, they’re still entitled to 1.5 times their regular wage.

The ESA also allows a ‘4% option’ as an alternative way of providing public holiday benefits. Note the fine print, though: choosing it doesn’t remove the premium pay owed when an employee actually works on the holiday.

How does New Brunswick’s list of eight compare with Ontario’s nine or Nova Scotia’s six? The statutory holidays by province guide maps the whole country.

Ready to check eligibility, entitlements and premium pay off one list instead of three browser tabs?

Leaves of absence

New Brunswick’s ESA has long provided job-protected leaves, including maternity and child-care leave, critical illness leave and intimate partner or sexual violence leave. The headline changes arrived in 2026.

Serious illness or injury leave. Bill 26, which amended the ESA in June 2026, introduced a job-protected unpaid leave of up to 27 weeks in a 52-week period for employees unable to work due to serious illness or injury. It replaced the previous standard of five days of protected sick leave, a step change in what the province expects employers to accommodate. To qualify, employees need 90 continuous days of service, each leave period must be at least one week long, and employers may request supporting medical documentation.

Federal changes for federally regulated employers. Bill C-59, in effect since December 2025, introduced a job-protected pregnancy loss leave: up to three paid days for a loss before the 20th week of pregnancy, and up to eight weeks unpaid for a stillbirth after the 20th week. It also expanded bereavement leave to up to eight weeks unpaid following the death of a child. If you’re provincially regulated these don’t bind you, but they’re a signal of where leave standards are heading.

The practical takeaway: if your employee handbook still describes five days of sick leave, it’s describing a law that no longer exists.

Termination, layoff and dismissal

Getting notice right is the difference between an orderly departure and a wrongful dismissal claim. New Brunswick’s minimums are refreshingly simple, with one threshold employers often get wrong.

Minimum statutory notice periods in New Brunswick

The commonly missed detail sits in the first row: under the ESA, employees with less than six months of service are not entitled to any notice of termination or layoff, per the Government of New Brunswick. Plenty of secondhand guides skip that threshold and tell employers everyone under five years gets two weeks. They don’t, and knowing the real line matters when a new hire doesn’t work out.

Notice must be written, and the obligations differ again in other parts of the country. The guide to termination notice requirements across Canada covers every province’s scale.

Employment standards complaints and enforcement

When an employee believes their rights under the ESA have been breached, the province gives them several ways to raise it. Complaints can be filed through an online form, by faxing a printable form (PDF, 292 KB) to 1-506-453-3806, by calling toll-free at 1-888-452-2687, by mail to P.O. Box 6000, Fredericton, NB, E3B 5H1, or by appointment at offices in Fredericton, Bathurst, Dieppe, Edmundston and Saint John. Offices operate Monday to Friday, 8:15 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

From there, an employment standards officer conducts a neutral investigation. The process protects the complainant’s identity: the Employment Standards Branch won’t reveal a complainant’s name to their employer without permission, and if an investigation can’t proceed without revealing who complained, there’s a built-in consent checkpoint where the employee decides whether to pursue or withdraw.

Employers are legally prohibited from dismissing, suspending, laying off, penalizing, disciplining or discriminating against an employee for making a complaint. If either party is unsatisfied with an investigation’s results, the matter can be referred to the Labour and Employment Board, the final step, whose decisions are publicly available in the Canadian Legal Information Institute (CanLII) database.

The best position to be in is never meeting that process at all, and that comes down to the fundamentals: accurate pay, correct entitlements and documented decisions.

The rulebook changed. Your policies should too

New Brunswick’s employment standards didn’t get harder in 2026; they got more specific. Salary figures in every job ad. Twenty-seven weeks of protected leave where five days used to be. A firm line at six months for termination notice. Employers who fold those specifics into their contracts, handbooks and payroll settings now will spend the next audit, hire or departure on solid ground, and their people will notice the difference too.

Keep every threshold, rate and notice period from this guide where your team can actually find it.