A worker who logs a 50-hour week and collects double time for the ten hours past 40 might assume the entire overtime check counts toward the new federal deduction. It does not. In an August 6 rewrite of its guidance on the deduction for qualified overtime compensation, the IRS worked through that exact scenario and…

The U.S. Department of Labor says an investigation recovered $101,125 in back wages for 36 workers at three Baton Rouge-area Japanese restaurants. The August 24 announcement concerns minimum-wage, overtime and tip-related requirements under the Fair Labor Standards Act. It is an enforcement recovery for identified workers, not a new benefit program or a payment that…

A South Carolina restaurant group paid $618,666 in back wages to 779 employees after a federal investigation found wage, tip-pool, recordkeeping and child-labor violations, the U.S. Department of Labor says. The agency also assessed $100,000 in civil money penalties, a separate amount that does not go to the workers named in the recovery. The scale…

A federal wage investigation at a Pompano Beach seafood restaurant ended with $732,976 recovered for 31 workers, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. The agency says the case involved a monthly-pay practice that did not account for all hours worked, including overtime. The sum is a recovery reported by the government, not a broad…

Paychecks grew slower than prices over the past year, and the only reason take-home pay did not fall further is that people worked more hours to make up the gap. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that real average hourly earnings, pay adjusted for inflation, dropped 0.3 percent between August 2025 and August 2026. Real…

The country’s workers stayed put in July. Just 1.9 percent of the American workforce quit a job that month, according to newly released government data, one of the quietest stretches for job-switching in years. On its own, a slow quits number does not sound like a paycheck story. But switching jobs is how a huge…

Federal civilian employees are on track to open their first paycheck of 2027 and find the same General Schedule base and locality pay rates they earned throughout 2026. On August 26, 2026, the White House sent Congress a pay plan that freezes those rates rather than letting the usual annual adjustment formula run its course.…

Paychecks grew again in August, but the cost of living grew faster. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on September 11 that average hourly pay, once adjusted for inflation, fell for the typical U.S. worker last month, and measured against a full year of price increases, real hourly pay in August 2026 is lower than…

A federal judge in California has ruled that the government’s current method for setting minimum pay on foreign farm labor is unlawful, and the Department of Labor has since posted a public notice warning employers that some of them could eventually owe back pay. The wage floor at issue does not stay confined to visa…

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest Employment Situation report, released September 4, 2026, shows long-term joblessness holding stubbornly high even as the broader labor market looks calm on the surface. Close to 1.9 million people had been out of work for 27 weeks or more in August, a stretch long enough that unemployment insurance…