Benefits, tax refunds, and the policy news that affects your wallet

Michigan domestic violence survivors who leave a job because of abuse can now qualify for unemployment benefits, a change that took effect July 17, 2026 under Public Act 238. Previously, voluntarily quitting a job almost always disqualified a worker from collecting unemployment — this new provision creates a specific exception for survivors. What Changed Under […]

Michigan unemployment claimants now have to prove three job-search activities every week instead of one. The change took effect Sunday, July 19, 2026, and it applies to anyone currently certifying for weekly or biweekly benefits through the Unemployment Insurance Agency (UIA). What Changed on July 19 Before July 19, claimants only had to complete and […]

New York has already delivered $189 million in summer food assistance to nearly 1.6 million children across the state — money meant to fill the gap left when school meals stop for summer break. What Summer EBT actually pays The Summer Electronic Benefits Transfer program gives eligible families $120 per child specifically to purchase food […]

A new federal investment account for children officially launched on July 4, 2026, and any U.S. kid born between 2025 and 2028 can get a $1,000 deposit from the government to start it — no income requirements, no application fee. What a Trump Account actually is A Trump Account is essentially a starter traditional IRA […]

Where you file for unemployment increasingly determines how healthy the fund paying your benefits actually is. Four major states — California, New York, Illinois, and Connecticut — are running their unemployment insurance trust funds with depleted reserves, while Sun Belt states like Texas, Florida, and North Carolina are sitting on surpluses. What a trust fund […]

August marks the second straight month that eligible Canadians receive boosted government benefit payments, after a 2% indexation increase was applied to benefit and credit amounts for 2026. The August payment dates Several major federal benefits land in August, each on its own schedule: Canada Pension Plan (CPP): deposits scheduled for August 27, 2026 Old […]

While Michigan’s unemployment overhaul has grabbed most of the headlines this summer, three other states — Texas, Indiana, and Washington — quietly changed their own unemployment insurance rules in 2026, and each change works a little differently. Texas: redefining "last work" Texas changed the legal definition of "last work" under its unemployment compensation law. Previously, […]

Iowa’s job market held steady in June, and unemployed Iowans are about to get a bigger weekly check on top of it — two pieces of good news landing in the same month for the state’s workforce. The jobless rate: unchanged, and low Iowa’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate stayed at 3.2% in June 2026, down […]

Wisconsin residents were close to seeing $300 rebate checks land in their mailboxes — until the state Senate rejected the deal that would have funded them, in a vote that scrambled the usual party lines. What was actually on the table The package under negotiation was worth $1.8 billion, combining a historic increase in the […]

A new working paper from researchers at Duke University, the U.S. Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve, and the University of Chicago pushes back on one of the most repeated economic claims of the last few years: that COVID-era stimulus checks were the main driver of the inflation spike that followed. What the study actually found […]