The Department of Labor wants to hear from you about what salary level would be appropriate for demarcating the border between employees eligible for overtime pay and those who should be exempt.
The DOL Wage and Hour Division made its request for public comments recently in the Federal Register. Click here for additional information. All comments are due no later than September 25.
DOL said its request for public comment is in furtherance of President Trump’s federal regulatory reform agenda. It expects to use the input in revising the overtime rule that was adopted last year by the Obama era Labor Department.
That regulation never went into effect because of a court stay issued late last year, and DOL earlier this year announced that it intends to change the rule.
The Obama administration had set the minimum an employer could receive in annual salary to be considered exempt at $47,476. The current threshold is still $23,600.
“The department is aware of stakeholder concerns that the standard salary level set in the 2016 final rule was too high,” DOL pointed out in its July 26 Federal Register notice.
“In particular, stakeholders have expressed the concern that the new salary level inappropriately excludes from exemption too many workers who pass the standard duties test, especially given the lack of a lower long test salary for employers to utilize for lower wage white collar employees.”
DOL posed 11 different questions in its request for information, including whether a different salary level would be more appropriate, the basis for setting a different salary level, and why a different salary level would be more appropriate.