Cleaning contracts New Jersey commercial cleaning companies can bid on

New Jersey has 21 counties, more than 560 municipalities and close to 600 school districts, and most of them buy custodial service on their own. That fragmentation is the reason small cleaning companies win public work here more often than in states with one big central buyer.

• State agencies post solicitations on NJSTART, the eProcurement system of the Division of Purchase and Property. Register as a vendor, pick the commodity codes for janitorial and custodial services, and the matching notices reach your inbox.
• Counties, municipalities and local authorities buy under the Local Public Contracts Law, and school boards under the Public School Contracts Law. Above the bid threshold, a contract has to be publicly advertised, so notices appear in newspapers of record, on each buyer's website and on the bid aggregators. Below it, buyers collect quotes, and a local company that is already known gets the call.
• Every bidder on a New Jersey public contract needs a Business Registration Certificate from the Division of Revenue and Enterprise Services, and larger contracts add political contribution disclosure forms. Keep both ready before the bid due date, because a missing form gets a low bid rejected.
• The state certifies small, minority-owned and women-owned businesses (SBE, MBE and WBE), and many agencies set aside part of their spending for small businesses.
• Cleaning in state-owned buildings, and in state-leased buildings over 20,000 square feet, falls under the State Building Service Contracts Act, so the contractor pays the building services prevailing wage that the Department of Labor publishes for each county. Price from that wage table, not from your normal pay rate.
• Bi-state and transit buyers, including the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and NJ Transit, run their own procurement for stations, terminals and offices.

Federal custodial work in New Jersey comes from Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, Picatinny Arsenal, Naval Weapons Station Earle, the Coast Guard Training Center in Cape May, the FAA technical center near Atlantic City and the VA medical centers in East Orange and Lyons, all posted on SAM.gov under NAICS 561720 with Service Contract Act wages. Our guide to winning government cleaning contracts covers registration and set-asides. On Growth and higher, Janitorial matches public-sector requests to your area.

Labor is the biggest line, and New Jersey's wage floor moves every January. The state minimum wage is 15.92 USD an hour in 2026 for most employers and 15.23 USD for seasonal employers and those with fewer than six employees, and it is adjusted each year for inflation under the state constitution. A three-year contract priced at today's wage with no escalation clause loses margin every January it runs.

Two other New Jersey rules change the math. Every employer with even one employee must carry workers' compensation insurance, and the Earned Sick Leave law gives each worker one hour of paid sick time for every 30 hours worked, up to 40 hours a year, so build both into the payroll burden. If you subcontract buildings, remember that New Jersey judges independent contractor status with a strict ABC test, which our janitorial subcontracting guide explains.

The janitorial bid calculator builds the price from square footage, facility type, frequency, supplies, overhead and your margin. For New Jersey bids, also price:

• An annual wage escalation clause tied to the January minimum wage change.
• The county building services prevailing wage on any state-owned or large state-leased building.
• Tolls, parking and travel time for crews working the waterfront towers and Newark.
• Background checks and badging for pharma campuses, labs and federal sites.

On Pro, you set your own production rates and wage rates per area, so a Jersey City bid and a Cherry Hill bid each use the right numbers.