Policy Analyses and Updates

New Jersey's Temporary Disability and Family Leave Insurance programs pay part of your wage when you cannot work. In 2026 both pay up to $1,119 a week, and since July 17 a new law (P.L. 2025, c. 279) protects your job while you use them, extending coverage to smaller employers. This nonpartisan report explains what the programs pay, who qualifies, what changed, and what a worker can do when an employer gets it wrong, and it corrects the myths already circulating. Authored by

This policy report answers four questions a New Jersey reader is most likely to ask: what the Pay and Benefits Transparency Act requires and which employers it covers, which rules are binding law today and which are only proposed, how the state law fits alongside federal employment law, which has no posting mandate of its own, and what has been measured, rather than predicted, about transparency policies. Every claim rests on official texts, federal data, and peer-reviewed re

No new federal rule requiring citizenship documents or photo ID to vote is in effect for this (2026) November's election in New Jersey. A new ARA report by Alyssa I. Agard explains what the SAVE America Act and related executive orders would actually require, who the requirements would reach and why, where the courts have left them, and how New Jersey voters can keep their own records consistent, regardless of what happens in Washington.

Agard Research Associates is pleased to share a new research publication by Shruthi Nandakumar, titled Working Conditions and Burnout Among U.S. Healthcare Workers (2002-2022): An Analysis with Implications for Federal Workforce Policy. The report is paired with an interactive dashboard, also built by Nandakumar, that lets readers move through two decades of healthcare worker burnout data and see the patterns for themselves.