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…

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…