Jury pay is a daily stipend for fulfilling one’s civic obligations. The money is meant to defray the costs of parking, lunch, and other incidentals. Serving on a jury isn’t a job, and jury pay isn’t earned income.
In my county, jurors are paid $30/day for each day (full or partial) that they come to the courthouse, whether picked for a case or not.
Jurors are not paid by check – they get prepaid debit cards handed to them on the way out the door. Apparently the overhead cost to cut a check is something like $11.50/check, while prepaid debit cards are about $2.00/card in administrative overhead.