Washington’s weekly paid family and medical leave payments will top out at $1,727 for claims filed on or after January 1, 2027, the state Employment Security Department says. That is $80 more than the $1,647 maximum that applies in 2026, a rise of about 4.9 percent. The minimum weekly payment stays at $100. The date…

The most a worker can collect in a week from Connecticut Paid Leave goes up on January 1, 2027, to $1,048.80. The 2026 maximum is $1,016.40, so the new ceiling is $32.40 a week higher, an increase of about 3.2%. Connecticut announced the new amount on August 5, 2026, the same day it announced next…

Minnesota workers will pay the same share of their wages for paid leave in 2027 as they do now. The state’s Department of Employment and Economic Development, known as DEED, announced on Friday, July 31, that the premium stays at 0.88% of covered wages, and that more than 75,000 Minnesotans have already taken leave this…

Massachusetts workers who start a paid family or medical leave in 2027 can receive up to $1,284.61 a week, the state’s new maximum. That is up from $1,230.39 a week for leaves that start in 2026, an increase of $54.22 a week at the top of the scale. The state’s Department of Family and Medical…

The Office of Personnel Management has finalized a rule that ends the governmentwide wait of a year in grade before a federal employee can be promoted. The agency announced the final rule on October 19, and it takes effect January 14, 2027. The change covers competitive-service General Schedule positions at GS-6 and above. It is…

Walmart’s starting medical plan will cost $39.80 per biweekly pay period in 2027, up $1.50, and annual enrollment for the new year runs through Friday, November 6. The company told its 1.6 million U.S. associates about the changes in an October 13 letter. A new $0 prescription tier and paid leave for parents of newborns…

Louisiana will start asking Medicaid expansion adults to show they work, study or volunteer on January 1, 2027, and the state has now put numbers on who is affected. The Louisiana Department of Health expects 297,441 adults in the expansion group to fall under the new rule, and 210,877 of them have no state-verified earnings…

The federal food stamp program, SNAP, limits some adults to three months of benefits in three years unless they work. Seven groups are exempt from that work clock, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the list includes veterans, pregnant women and people 24 or younger who were in foster care on their 18th…

A worker with back wages recovered by the Labor Department has to send in one identity document and will be paid only by electronic transfer. The Wage and Hour Division’s Workers Owed Wages page lists the accepted documents, and it says: “Starting October 1, 2025, all payments will be made electronically.” The page sets out…

Workers who are owed back wages recovered by the U.S. Department of Labor can claim them online, and the claim takes a Login.gov account and about six weeks. The department’s Wage and Hour Division, known as WHD, runs the process through its Workers Owed Wages tool. All payments have been electronic since October 1, 2025.…