Interactions between jets and the quark-gluon plasma produced in heavy ion collisions are studied via the angular distributions of summed charged-particle transverse momenta (p T) with respect to both the leading and subleading jet axes in high-p T dijet events. The contributions of charged particles in different momentum ranges to the overall event p T balance are decomposed into short-range jet peaks and a long-range azimuthal asymmetry in charged-particle p T. The results for PbPb collisions are compared to those in pp collisions using data collected in 2011 and 2013, at collision energy $$ \sqrt{s_{\mathrm{N}\;\mathrm{N}}}=2.76 $$ TeV with integrated luminosities of 166 μb−1 and 5.3 pb−1, respectively, by the CMS experiment at the LHC. Measurements are presented as functions of PbPb collision centrality, charged-particle p T, relative azimuth, and radial distance from the jet axis for balanced and unbalanced dijets.