TikTok has filed for an emergency reprieve with the U.S. Supreme Court to buy more time before a nationwide ban on the social media app is set to go into effect next month.

“This Court should grant an injunction pending further review,” TikTok and its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, said in Monday’s filing for a temporary injunction. A ban, they said, would “shutter one of America’s most popular speech platforms the day before a presidential inauguration.”

The fate of TikTok in the U.S. has been up in the air since 2020, when then-President Trump moved to shut down the short-form video app because of national security concerns.

That set off four years of back-and-forth between TikTok and the U.S. government. In April, President Biden signed a law that required ByteDance to sell TikTok to a non-Chinese entity; TikTok responded by suing the U.S. government in May.

The company this month lost a major court battle in its efforts to remain active in the U.S., setting up a potential showdown in the Supreme Court.

As things stand now, TikTok is scheduled to be banned in the U.S. on Jan. 19 if the tech company does not divest before then.

The move would result in “a massive and unprecedented censorship,” TikTok said. “Estimates show that small businesses on TikTok would lose more than $1 billion in revenue and creators would suffer almost $300 million in lost earnings in just one month unless the ban is halted.”

More than 170 million Americans use the video app, on which people share dance routines, news stories, recipes and funny videos.

“The Supreme Court has an established record of upholding Americans’ right to free speech,” TikTok spokesperson Michael Hughes said in a statement. “Today, TikTok is asking the Court to do what it has traditionally done in free speech cases: apply the most rigorous scrutiny to speech bans and conclude that it violates the 1st Amendment.”

Although he pushed for a ban during his first term, Trump reversed course while campaigning this year.

“For all of those that want to save TikTok in America, vote for Trump,” he said in a video posted on Truth Social in September. “The other side’s closing it up.”

More than 1 million people across the country earn paychecks of $500,000 or higher, according to a report that analyzed payroll records on millions of salaries paid over the course of a year.

The study titled “High-paying jobs? They’re a dime a dozen,” which was done by ADP, a leading management company that provides payroll and other services, concluded that “a substantial number of professionals found in every major metro” earn more than half a million dollars annually. Government data, including the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, typically obscure the prevalence of hefty paychecks by capping the level of wages reported.

One California metropolis stood out from the rest, the ADP report found. The San Francisco Bay Area has the highest concentration of jobs that pay more than $500,000, “vastly outranking” other major cities. One in 48 jobs in the Bay Area pays $500,000 or more, nearly double the share in Austin, Texas, which has the second highest concentration.

The Los Angeles and Long Beach region has the 12th highest concentration of jobs that pay that amount. Slightly less than 1% of employees in Los Angeles and Long Beach earn more than $500,000, while 0.22% earn more than $1 million and 0.06% earn more than $2 million.

The wealthiest neighborhoods in the Los Angeles area include Beverly Hills, Pacific Palisades and Malibu, according to real estate firms.

In the Bay Area, more than 2% of employees earn at least half a million dollars, 0.54% earn at least $1 million and 0.15% earn at least $2 million. New York, Boston and Fort Meyers, Fla., are among the other highest ranked cities for employee wages, according to ADP.

The report attributed San Francisco’s “exceptional concentration” of high earners to Silicon Valley and the tech industry, in which executives and other individuals earn “extraordinary compensation.”

Other highly paid professionals including doctors and lawyers face income restrictions based on how many patients or clients they can serve, the report said. In the tech industry, however, productivity has no such constraints, especially at large companies.

“The Bay Area’s considerable lead likely reflects not just the dominance of tech in its economy and workforce, but also its position as the nucleus for the industry’s top talent and the corporate giants that rely most heavily on their expertise,” the report said.

While Austin, Texas, which landed in second place on ADP’s list, is another tech hub, the Bay Area’s intense tech focus wasn’t the only factor contributing to its singular status. Skyrocketing housing prices in the Bay Area have pushed out middle- and low-income residents, leaving the area’s population to be dominated by those earning more.

Nationally, 0.79% of jobs pays more than $500,000, which accounts for more than a million positions. Remote work has drawn high earners to desirable locations including Honolulu and parts of Florida.

“High earners aren’t confined to one industry or region,” the report said. “Though tech is at the forefront, very high salaries are more prevalent than one might realize.”

ADP collected the payroll data between July 1, 2023, and June 30, 2024, from metropolitan areas with more than 1 million residents.

After four years under Joe Biden, who enthusiastically called himself “the most pro-union president in American history,” employers and labor groups alike are heading into President-elect Donald Trump’s second term unsure of what lies ahead.

Although his nominee for Labor secretary has won bipartisan praise and has a pro-labor track record, Trump’s threats to deport millions, impose tariffs and weaken worker protections have left many in the labor movement wary of what his time in office will bring.

Here’s what a second Trump administration could mean for labor.

What is the National Labor Relations Board and what could happen to it under Trump?

The National Labor Relations Board is the federal agency tasked with safeguarding the right of private employees to unionize or organize in other ways to improve their working conditions. Under Jennifer Abruzzo, whom Biden appointed to run the NLRB as its general counsel, the board took “a fairly innovative and aggressive approach” to enforcing protections, said labor attorney Benjamin Dictor, who represents several unions, including United Auto Workers and a Teamsters local.

Abruzzo took an expansive approach to labor law that favored workers. For example, she pushed through a ban on noncompete agreements, which restrict a person’s ability to get a new job after leaving a post. She also drove regional offices to pursue more broad remedies for harmed workers and successfully sought a ban on captive audience meetings, in which employers require staff to listen to anti-union arguments.

Dictor and others anticipate the Trump administration will swiftly replace Abruzzo with a more employer-friendly general counsel. This type of ping-ponging of priorities from administration to administration is typical, but the change is expected to be even more pronounced, given Abruzzo’s novel approach.

Trump also has a clear path toward securing a Republican majority on the five-member board itself, which will allow his administration to reverse gains that unions made under Biden. The labor board probably will seek to reverse decisions that expedited the union election process, put pressure on employers to voluntarily recognize and negotiate with unions, prohibited confidentiality and non-disparagement provisions and banned captive audience meetings, among other actions, said Adam Primm, an attorney who represents employers.

Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) led a last-ditch attempt last week to lock in Democratic control of the board for the next two years, but the effort collapsed when the Senate failed to approve a second term for one of Biden’s nominees.

Trump has promised to deport millions of people. What would that mean for the economy?

A major deportation effort could have a significant effect on industries that rely heavily on immigrant workers including agriculture, construction and hospitality.

The Center for Migration Studies of New York estimates that as many as 8.3 million immigrants working in the U.S. are here illegally and they represent more than 5% of the workforce.

Among employers there is rising concern that under Trump there will be a significant increase in workplace raids, audits of employment eligibility documents and other immigration enforcement actions against companies, said George Howard, an attorney with Quarles & Brady.

Labor advocates, meanwhile, worry about the opposite happening: Enforcement against unscrupulous employers will fall by the wayside.

For example, immigrant labor advocates expect Trump will do away with a Biden program that awards job permits to undocumented workers at companies under investigation for workplace violations — an effort intended to encourage cooperation with investigations of safety, wage and other labor violations.

Attorney Yvonne Medrano of Los Angeles-based Bet Tzedek Legal Services, a nonprofit legal advocacy group, said there is concern that employers of undocumented immigrants may feel emboldened to exploit workers if the government eases up on efforts to root out wage theft, child labor and other violations.

Trump has said he will impose sweeping tariffs. How could they affect American workers?

Trump has said he will impose sweeping tariffs on key trading partners including Canada, Mexico and China as soon as he takes office. The effects of those tariffs could hit American workers in several ways.

Prices would rise on certain goods in industries affected by tariffs, broadly increasing the cost of living and eroding workers’ purchasing power unless wages rise commensurately, said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics.

Higher prices would have an outsize effect on lower-income workers because a larger proportion of their budget is spent on food and clothing, Zandi said.

And it’s likely that countries facing tariffs from the U.S. would retaliate with their own tariffs, as China did during Trump’s first term. The trade war Trump led in his first term delivered higher costs to consumers and uncertainty to the U.S. auto, agricultural and manufacturing sectors.

Companies that rely on imported goods, such as machine parts and industrial supplies, will be forced to pay more for those goods, ballooning their costs and potentially forcing them to make job cuts, Zandi said.

Trump has picked Lori Chavez-DeRemer, a pro-union Republican, to lead the Labor Department. What does that mean for workers?

The union-friendly track record of Trump’s Labor secretary choice has fueled anxiety among the GOP, with several Republican senators expressing concern. Lori Chavez-DeRemer is known for being one of only three GOP lawmakers who co-sponsored legislation, known as the PRO Act, that would have significantly expanded labor rights, including measures that increased penalties for employer labor law violations and expanded union eligibility.

Trade groups have also emphasized concern with the choice.

“IFA looks forward to ensuring the job-killing PRO Act and Biden-era joint employer standard have no place in the incoming administration,” Matt Haller, chief executive of the International Franchise Assn., said in a recent statement. He was referring to an attempt by Biden to broaden rules for when two or more companies should be considered employers of a group of workers.

Although a pro-worker appointee has sparked concerns, attorney Patrick Muldowney, who represents employers on labor issues, said the appointment does not mark a tangible threat to employers.

“I don’t see that as moving the needle very far,” Muldowney said.

The Department of Labor administers federal laws governing minimum hourly wage and overtime pay, as well as protection against employment discrimination, workplace safety rules and unemployment insurance. Its reach is less visible in states like California that have implemented stronger protections than those offered at the federal level.

Labor advocates still expect the Trump administration to pursue anti-worker changes under Chavez-DeRemer.

Judy Conti, government affairs director of the National Employment Law Project, said she anticipates the Trump administration will ease up on enforcing safety rules, narrow eligibility for overtime pay and make it harder for gig-economy workers to gain status as employees.

“Chavez-DeRemer’s record suggests she understands the value of policies that strengthen workers’ rights and economic security,” said Rebecca Dixon, president and CEO of NELP, in a news release last month. “But the Trump administration’s agenda is fundamentally at odds with these principles.”

Her “true commitment to workers will be tested,” Dixon said.