Main Street Dollars

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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…

Ten states have posted a 2027 minimum wage increase running from $17.73 in Washington down to $11.40 in Ohio

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Ten states have now published their 2027 minimum wages, and the spread between the top and bottom of the group is $6.33 an hour. Washington leads at $17.73, while Ohio sits at the bottom at $11.40. Every figure comes from the state’s own labor agency, and Michigan’s $1.27 an hour is the largest single increase…

Quits have fallen to 1.9% of employment with 7.1 million openings, leaving far less room to job-hop for a raise

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Workers are leaving jobs at a slower pace than a year ago, and that changes the math on switching employers for more pay. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on September 29, 2026, in its Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) for August, that the quits rate was 1.9 percent of employment, or 3.1…

One employee at a Houston-area pediatric hospital is getting $650,000 to settle a religious-objection case

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in Workplace Rights

A single worker is set to receive $650,000 from a Houston-area pediatric hospital to resolve a religious-discrimination charge, according to a September 30, 2026 announcement from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The employee asked to be excused from certain duties on religious grounds, was refused, and was then discharged, the agency says. Neither the…

Average hourly pay bought 0.3% less in August than a year earlier

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A dollar of hourly pay in August 2026 bought less than it did twelve months earlier. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that real average hourly earnings for all employees decreased 0.3 percent, seasonally adjusted, between August 2025 and August 2026. Pay rose, but prices rose faster. The same BLS release shows the slide continuing…

Federal workers face a 0% January raise while law enforcement officers get 3.8%

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Federal employees on the General Schedule are headed into January 2027 with no across-the-board raise, while a separate group of law enforcement personnel is slated for 3.8%. The split comes from the Alternative Pay Plan that President Trump issued on August 26, 2026, and it leaves two groups of federal workers on very different paths.…

Washington, New Jersey, Connecticut, Michigan and Minnesota have posted January 1 minimum wages, topping out at $17.73

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Five states have now put a January 1, 2027 minimum wage on the record, and the highest of them is Washington’s $17.73 an hour. New Jersey sits at $16.48, Connecticut at $17.48, Michigan at $15.00 and Minnesota at $11.87. For a full-time worker earning the minimum, the gap between the top and bottom of that…

Triad National Security will pay $2.8 million over religious and disability discrimination tied to a vaccine policy

Oct 1, 2026

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