Main Street Dollars

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Two of the country’s biggest employers are now defendants in federal disability suits brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and both turn on the same question: whether a deaf person was given a sign language interpreter. The suits were filed a day apart in the Eastern District of Virginia, one over a Walmart…

110 lawmakers asked congressional leaders to cancel the January pay freeze for federal civilian employees

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A signature block of 110 names closes a September 15 letter to the four top leaders of Congress, and every name backs one request: do not let federal civilian employees go into January 2027 with a pay freeze. The document is a plea to the leadership, not a law, and no pay figure has been…

Maryland starts taking paid family leave contributions January 1, with no benefit until 2028

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in Workplace Rights

Wages paid on or after January 1, 2027 in Maryland will carry a new line on the pay stub: a contribution to the state’s Family and Medical Leave Insurance program, known as FAMLI. The worker’s share is 0.45 percent of wages, matched by the employer. The deduction arrives a full year before the first benefit,…

New York’s minimum wage will not rise on January 1 after a statutory off-ramp was triggered, holding at $17.00 and $16.00

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New York’s automatic inflation raise to the minimum wage is not coming this winter. The state Department of Labor has declared that a built-in safety valve in the 2023 wage law was tripped, which freezes the general rate where it stands today. Workers in the downstate counties stay at $17.00 an hour, and workers everywhere…

New Jersey farmworkers reach $15 an hour in January and the tipped cash wage goes to $6.61

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in Workplace Rights

For the first time, New Jersey’s minimum wage for agricultural workers will reach $15.00 an hour, and the cash wage an employer must pay a tipped worker rises to $6.61. Both changes take effect on January 1, 2027, and both come from the same annual adjustment. They sit on separate tracks, though, and one does…

Amazon is putting more than $230 million into pay and benefits for Whole Foods workers

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“We are investing more than $230 million in the year ahead,” said Jason Buechel, Amazon’s vice president of Worldwide Grocery Stores and the CEO of Whole Foods Market, calling it “one of the most significant investments in our more than 100,000 Whole Foods Market team members to date.” The $230 million is Amazon’s own number,…

New York is not raising its general minimum wage in January

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New York’s general minimum wage will not move on January 1, 2027. The state Department of Labor says the usual inflation-based increase is off the table for the year, so the floor stays at $17.00 an hour in New York City, Long Island and Westchester County and at $16.00 an hour everywhere else in the…

Rank-and-file workers averaged $32.60 an hour in September, seven cents more than in August

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Average hourly earnings for private-sector production and nonsupervisory employees rose by 7 cents, or 0.2 percent, to $32.60 in September 2026. The Bureau of Labor Statistics published the figure on October 2 in its monthly jobs report, alongside a payroll gain of 29,000 and an unemployment rate of 4.2 percent. A second, higher wage figure…

More than 5 million federal student loan borrowers have been in default for over six years, and 5 million more went into default in under a year

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in Credit & Debt

Treasury and the Department of Education put two numbers side by side on September 30, 2026, and neither of them is ten million. More than 5 million borrowers have been in default on federal student loans for over six years, the departments said, and an additional 5 million entered default in less than one year.…

Up to two months of deposited Social Security is shielded when a collector freezes an account

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