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At least 20 states are beginning the new year by increasing their minimum wages, while Puerto Rico and several cities and counties are also bumping up pay for workers in 2022, The Hill reported. A total of 26 states had minimum wage increases go into effect at the start of 2022, with wage hikes beginning in 22 states on Jan. 1, according to Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory U.S., a company providing information on finance, regulatory compliance and the law. A wage increase in New York state began a day earlier, taking effect on Dec. 31. Additionally, 56 cities and counties are increasing the minimum wage in 2022, the National Employment Law Center reported. Thirty-five of those local increases are also going into effect on Jan. 1. According to Wolters Kluwer, the highest rate hike comes from the city of West Hollywood, Ca., which is implementing a $17.64 minimum rate of pay per hour for hotel workers, which the company says is the highest minimum wage in the country.

U.S. energy firms added oil and natural gas rigs for a record 17 months in a row as higher prices lured some drillers back to the wellpad after last year's coronavirus-driven decline in demand, Reuters reported. The oil and gas rig count, an early indicator of future output, was unchanged at 586 in the week to Dec. 31, energy services firm Baker Hughes Co said in its closely followed report. During December, the total rig count rose by 17. For the quarter, the count was up 65, its fifth increase in a row. For the year the count was up 235. That compares with a decrease of 454 rigs in 2020 and a decline of 278 rigs in 2019.

Some foreign auto makers and electric-car juggernaut Tesla Inc. likely surged ahead in U.S. sales in 2021, siphoning market share from Detroit, as a global computer-chip shortage dealt an uneven blow to the car business, the Wall Street Journal reported. Final U.S. sales tallies, scheduled to be released by most major auto makers later Tuesday, are expected to show that Toyota Motor Corp. finished as the top car company in annual sales for the first time, unseating General Motors Co. GM 4.33%, which has been No. 1 for decades. Overall, auto makers sold just shy of 15 million vehicles in the U.S. last year, according to a forecast from research firm J.D. Power. That total would be up slightly from 2020, when the onset of the pandemic hurt car sales for part of that year. But it is a sharp drop from the mark of 17 million vehicles that the industry had eclipsed for five straight years before that. Demand hasn’t been the problem. Vehicle sales set a blistering pace last spring as American car shoppers surfaced looking to spend their savings from lockdown on new wheels. But by summer, the chip shortage that had been hobbling factory schedules world-wide resulted in nearly bare dealership lots, curbing sales in the second half of 2021. Forecasters expect another muted year of vehicle sales, even though the chip shortage is expected to gradually ease in coming months. Auto executives have said it could take the entire year to substantially replenish dealership inventories, which likely will curtail sales despite what dealers say is strong underlying demand. (Subscription required.)

Michigan likely paid about $8.5 billion in fraudulent jobless benefits over a 19-month period during the coronavirus pandemic, far more than previously estimated, according to a report released yesterday by the state’s unemployment agency, the Associated Press reported. The figure, provided by Deloitte, came more than a year after the firm said the agency expected fraud losses in the “hundreds of millions” of dollars. State auditors have since reported that the agency improperly paid $3.9 billion to claimants who were later deemed ineligible. There is “some overlap” between those payments — made to self-employed and gig workers who began qualifying for federal aid because of the pandemic — and the overall $8.5 billion estimate, said Julia Dale, director of the Unemployment Insurance Agency. “My initial reaction to seeing these numbers is one of outrage and certainly frustration,” she told The Associated Press. “These are not the type of numbers that we had hoped to see or want to see.” She added, however, that Michigan is doing a much better job blocking fraud, noting it avoided an estimated $43.7 billion in fraud from March 2020 through September 2021. The state paid $34.5 billion in benefits over that time. The percentage of payments involving likely imposter fraud was 0.46% last fiscal year, down from 9.7% between March 2020 and October 2020. The portion paid for likely intentional misrepresentation fraud — when real claimants may fabricate income-verification documents or knowingly not report information that would make them ineligible — was 0.11%, a drop from 20.1%.

At least five Republican-led states have extended unemployment benefits to people who’ve lost jobs over vaccine mandates — and a smattering of others may soon follow, the Washington Post reported. Workers who quit or are fired for cause — including for defying company policy — are generally ineligible for jobless benefits. But Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Kansas and Tennessee have carved out exceptions for those who won’t submit to the multi-shot coronavirus vaccine regimens that many companies now require. Similar ideas have been floated in Wyoming, Wisconsin and Missouri. Critics contend that these states are incentivizing people to skip shots that public health experts say offer the best line of defense against the coronavirus. Business leaders and industry groups have argued against the rule changes because, they say, companies would shoulder much of the costs. And the efforts are playing out as the Biden administration is pressing immunization rules for private companies and as coronavirus cases are surging again because of the fast-spreading omicron variant. Observers say it’s a mark of the politicization of the coronavirus — with fights flaring over business closures, mask mandates and more — and how it has scrambled state politics and altered long-held positions. It wasn’t long ago, they note, that two dozen Republican-led states moved to restrict unemployment aid to compel residents to return to the workforce and ease labor shortages.

Flight cancellations marred Christmas weekend for many travelers, as COVID-19 left carriers short-staffed to operate busy schedules over the holiday, the Wall Street Journal reported. In the U.S., canceled flights mounted through the weekend and involved many airlines. The disruptions came suddenly as a ramp-up in employee absences caught carriers off guard. The industry for months had been adjusting to labor shortages amid high customer demand, and because of measures such as incentive pay and scaled-back schedules had gotten through Thanksgiving largely without problems. It was over Thanksgiving weekend that the Omicron variant of COVID-19 emerged as a new global public health foe. Its rapid spread pushed the airlines’ staffing limits this weekend, they said. It was unclear Sunday whether the worst of the canceling was over or if there would be more in the days ahead. “Our current pilot COVID-19 case count is on the rise. Pilots who have developed symptoms are also in quarantine and we have a high number of pilots on the sick list,” Bryan Quigley, senior vice president of flight operations at United Airlines Holdings Inc., on Sunday wrote to pilots. He asked them to take precautions. Delta Air Lines Inc., which pointed to the new variant as well as winter weather as problematic, said midday that it had canceled about 161 of the 4,155 flights it had planned to operate Sunday, with around 40 more cancellations forecast for the day, a smaller number than it had initially expected to scrap. Delta canceled 375 flights on Christmas Day and more than 200 on Christmas Eve, the airline said. (Subscription required.)

The Supreme Court last night announced it will hold a special hearing next month to consider challenges to the Biden administration’s pandemic efforts affecting millions of workers, a nationwide vaccine-or-testing requirement for large employers and a separate coronavirus vaccine mandate for health-care workers, the Washington Post reported. Both policies have been at least partially blocked from going into effect by lower courts after challenges from Republican-led states, and from business and religious coalitions. It is highly unusual for the justices to schedule such hearings on emergency requests. Both will be considered Jan. 7, the Friday before the court was to resume its normal schedule of oral arguments. One of the cases involves a rule from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) that requires employers with 100 or more workers to have staff vaccinated or tested on a regular basis. The other is from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and it requires vaccination for workers at facilities that receive federal funds tied to those programs.

President Joe Biden today is convening a meeting of U.S. officials and private sector companies, including FedEx, to talk about ongoing efforts to address supply chain disruptions, Reuters reported. Biden created a task force in June to address the issue, and the White House argues it has made "significant progress to alleviate bottlenecks that are rooted in the global pandemic." Last month, Walmart Inc. Chief Executive Doug McMillon said a decision to extend port hours was having a positive impact on the flow of goods. Still, supply chain issues continue to affect many U.S. industries. Reuters reported this week that candy makers, like retailers and farmers, have been slammed during COVID-19 with high commodity prices, labor shortages, and transportation and supply chain snarls, preventing them from fully cashing in on the holiday season. Much of the shipping crunch resulted from the pandemic. Home-bound Americans with unspent travel and entertainment dollars and government stimulus checks splurged on everything from food and refrigerators to toys and exercise equipment. The demand for imports overwhelmed supply chains. Biden, who is wrestling with U.S. inflation that recently hit a 31-year high, has taken measures to try to break such logjams, including unclogging ports and expanding trucker hours. Today's meeting will include the secretaries of Agriculture, Commerce, Labor and Transportation as well as National Economic Council Director Brian Deese and Port Envoy John Porcari.