Let’s Try this Again: Department of Labor Proposes Salary Increases for White-Collar Exemptions

Please note: This post has been updated to reflect a corrected annual minimum salary threshold of $35,308 which represents a nearly $12,000 per year increase from the current salary requirement of $23,660.

The U.S. Department of Labor issued a much-anticipated proposed rule addressing the “white-collar” exemptions for the Fair Labor Standards Act. If the proposed rule is enacted later this year, the new minimum salary threshold will be $35,308 per year (or $679 per week). This represents nearly a $12,000 per year increase from the current salary requirement of $23,660 (or $455 per week). Thus, once this new rule goes into effect, for an employee to be exempt from the FLSA’s minimum wage and overtime rules, the employee’s salary will need to meet the new threshold.

Importantly though, the DOL will not be altering any other aspects of the “white-collar” exemption tests. It won’t be changing the various tests for executives, administrative staff, or professionals. Nor does the DOL’s new rule include periodic automatic increases to the minimum salary threshold as the Obama-era DOL had proposed before a district court stopped it in 2016.

Depending on how quickly the DOL moves through the rule-making process and issues the new rule, the new minimum salary threshold will likely go into place late summer or early fall of this year. For that reason, as they did in 2016 in response to the prior proposed increases, employers will want to begin evaluating their staff to determine who may be affected and determine how they want to proceed. Additionally, because of this rule change, employers will also want to audit all of their employees to make sure each one is properly classified, and if not, take this opportunity to reclassify employees in a manner that tries to minimize liability for any past misclassifications.