When will the remaining state offices fully reopen?

Yesterday marked the long-awaited deadline for when all state government employees were meant to return to work fully in-person, but the administration of Gov. Phil Murphy chose instead to stagger the reopening and focus on the state’s largest agencies first.

Thus, only four offices began the full return to work yesterday: the office of the governor (which Murphy said had mostly reopened anyways), the Department of Labor, the Motor Vehicle Commission, and the Department of Children and Families.

Even within those reopened departments, some services remain impacted by Covid. In the Department of Labor, for example, One-Stop Career Centers will offer in-person services by appointment only, and remote services otherwise.

The next wave of departments to reopen will be ones that have more than 2,500 employees: the Department of Law and Public Safety, the Department of Corrections, the Department of Health, the Department of the Treasury, the Department of Environmental Protection, the Department of Transportation, and the Department of Human Services. They are scheduled to return to the office on November 8.

A week later on November 15, offices with between 500 and 2,500 employees will reopen, including the Department of Military and Veterans Affairs, the Department of Community Affairs, the Department of Education, the State Parole Board, and the Office of Information Technology.

Finally, on November 29, offices with fewer than 500 employees will return to full in-person work. This group includes the Election Law Enforcement Commission, the Department of Agriculture, the Civil Service Commission, the Office of the Comptroller, the Economic Development Authority, the Department of Banking and Insurance, and a number of others.

Most state workers have already been operating on a hybrid schedule since June, in which they come to the office two or three days a week. The current wave of reopenings is meant to shift that hybrid schedule back to the in-person schedule in place before the pandemic.