The latest federal jobs data shows the longest-lasting bout of unemployment in years is becoming more common, not less. Nearly 1.9 million Americans have been searching for work for more than six months, long enough to exhaust most state unemployment checks and start eating into retirement savings or credit-card limits. For households living paycheck to…

Servers, bartenders and other tipped workers now have a firm answer on what does and doesn’t count toward the new federal tip deduction: an automatic service charge a restaurant adds to the bill, with no way for the customer to refuse it, is not a qualified tip, even after the money reaches the staff who…

A line on the federal withholding form used by millions of paycheck workers quietly picked up a new function for 2026. Overtime pay already carries a federal income tax deduction created by last year’s tax law, but claiming it used to mean waiting for a refund the following spring regardless of how the money was…

A single two-letter code sitting in box 12 of a 2026 Form W-2 now decides whether a household’s overtime pay carries a federal tax deduction at all. Under new IRS guidance, the amount an employer types next to code TT is the only figure the tax code will recognize for the qualified overtime deduction that…

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…