The state has paid out more than $2 billion in bonuses to more than 800,000 health care workers statewide through the Health Care Worker Bonus Program. The program was launched by Gov. Kathy Hochul in 2022 and provided bonuses of up to $3,000 for eligible health care workers across New York.
“Health care workers deliver for New Yorkers every day – and that’s why we’re delivering for them,” Hochul said.
New York’s Health Care Worker Bonus Program issued payments to workers who provide hands-on and patient-facing health care services. Workers receiving payments through this program must have an annualized base salary (excluding any bonuses or overtime pay) of $125,000 or less and can be full-time or part-time.
Bonuses payments were determined by specific “vesting periods,” or the number of hours worked during a consecutive six-month period between Oct. 1, 2021, through March 31. Qualified employees received up to a maximum of $3,000 in total bonus payments over two vesting periods.
News of the bonuses comes after state officials announced the delivery of approximately $350 million in supplemental payments to low- and moderate-income families statewide through the Empire State Child Credit program. More than 1 million families will receive this financial assistance without any need to apply, as each eligible family will receive a direct payment of up to $330 per child. The State has already begun sending checks to eligible taxpayers, with all checks expected to be sent by the end of August.
The Empire State Child Credit is a refundable tax credit for income-qualified New Yorkers with children. In 2023, Hochul and the State Legislature expanded the Empire State Child Credit to include children under 4, benefitting an estimated 600,000 additional children per year. Earlier this year, the more than 1 million families eligible for the Empire State Child Credit began to receive hundreds of millions of dollars in tax credits based on their 2023 tax filings.