A married couple who both work overtime shifts — one at a hospital, the other at a warehouse — face a filing decision that a single overtime earner never has to think about: whether filing separately could ever make sense once this deduction is on the table. For this particular tax break, the law already…

The Form W-2 that tipped workers receive for the 2026 tax year looks different from every version that came before it. Where box 14 used to be a single catch-all for miscellaneous items an employer wanted to note, it now splits into two: box 14a for the old leftover items, and a brand-new box 14b…

A line cook picks up his first paycheck after hearing that Congress passed a law wiping out taxes on overtime, and nothing about the check has changed. The federal income tax withholding line looks the same. The Social Security and Medicare lines look the same. That isn’t a payroll error. The relief created by the…

The IRS marked the start of National Payroll Week, observed September 7 through 11 this year, with a reminder that the week is as much a nudge for workers as it is a tribute to the people who run payroll. In a release issued September 4 (IR-2026-105), the agency encouraged employees to take a fresh…

Beneath the raw count of 7.3 million job openings that made headlines on September 1 sits a simpler number: the job openings rate, which measures openings as a share of all jobs, filled and unfilled combined. In July, that rate was 4.4 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and it has stayed inside…

The government’s clearest monthly snapshot of hiring and firing showed a labor market still moving in both directions at a steady clip in July. Employers hired 5.1 million people, let go of 1.7 million through layoffs and discharges, and watched another 3.1 million walk out the door on their own by quitting. All three figures,…

Average hourly pay for private-sector workers hit $37.75 in August, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported this month, a 3.1 percent increase from a year earlier. That number comes from the same monthly jobs report that also showed payrolls up by 162,000 and the unemployment rate holding at 4.1 percent. For a household trying to…

A biotech company just told the Securities and Exchange Commission that it is cutting about three-quarters of its staff in a single reorganization, and the headline circulating about “a biotech” without naming one obscures a specific, identifiable company making a specific, identifiable bet. That company is TScan Therapeutics, a Waltham, Massachusetts, cell-therapy developer trading on…

The Trade Desk, the digital advertising company whose software helps brands buy ads across the open internet, told the Securities and Exchange Commission on September 3 that it is eliminating roughly 15 percent of its workforce. The filing, made under Item 2.05 of a Form 8-K, discloses cash restructuring charges of $39 million to $51…

The U.S. Department of Labor released its weekly unemployment snapshot on September 3, and one comparison stands out: fewer people applied for a new unemployment check last week than during the same week a year ago. Buried in the same report is a narrower number that matters to a specific group of readers — 337…