WHITE-COLLAR WORKERS ELIGIBLE FOR OVERTIME PAY UNDER NEW RULES:

The Biden administration announced a new rule that would make millions of white-collar workers newly eligible for overtime pay. Starting July 1, the rule would increase the threshold at which executive, administrative and professional employees are exempt from overtime pay to $43,888 from the current $35,568. That change would make an additional one million workers eligible to receive time-and-a-half wages for each hour they put in beyond a 40-hour week.

On January 1, the threshold would rise further to $58,656, covering another three million workers.

“This rule will restore the promise to workers that if you work more than 40 hours in a week, you should be paid for that time,” Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su said in a statement. “So often, lower-paid salaried workers are doing the same job as their hourly counterparts but are spending more time away from their families for no additional pay. This is unacceptable.”

While hourly workers are generally entitled to overtime pay, salaried workers are not if they earn above a certain pay level and supervise other workers, use professional expertise or judgment or hire and fire workers, among other duties.

The initial bump in the salary threshold to $43,888 that takes effect July 1 is based on a Trump administration formula that sets it at the 20th percentile of the full-time weekly earnings of salaried employees in the lowest-wage region, which is currently the South. The increase to $58, 656 on January 1 adopts a new formula that sets the threshold at the 35th percentile of those weekly earnings.

Starting July 1, 2027, the rule requires Labor to adjust the salary threshold every three years to account for updated wage data.