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Take Two: Department of Labor Proposes New Overtime Pay Requirements


This past Thursday, the Department of Labor announced its proposed new overtime pay requirements that would expand overtime eligibility to include most salaried workers earning less than about $35,000.00 per year.  Under this proposal, most employees earning less than the proposed threshold would be entitled to receive time and a half pay when they worked more than 40 hours in a week.  It is expected that should this proposal take effect, over one million employees would be entitled to overtime eligibility.

Readers might be aware that the current salary threshold is set at about $23,700.00 per year.  That threshold has been in effect since the President George W. Bush era Department of Labor implemented that change in 2004.  With that being said, this new proposal from the President Donald Trump era Department of Labor still falls short of what had previously been proposed in 2016.  At that time, the President Barack Obama era Department of Labor proposed raising the threshold up to about $47,500.00 per year.  That initial proposal was met with much resistance by those in the business community and a federal judge blocked the implementation of the rule before it could take effect. 

Many readers might be asking what comes next?  Following the Department of Labor's announcement last week, the proposal will be subject to a 60 day public comment period.  Many expect that once the public comment period ends, the proposed rule will take effect, likely by the start of 2020.  While this new proposal has been deemed inadequate by some (compared to the 2016 proposal), many have pointed out that it is still on the high end for what they had expected would be proposed by this iteration of the Department of Labor.



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