The Obama administration’s effort to rewrite the federal rule covering overtime, while dead, is likely to succeed in one respect: It is forcing the Trump administration to do its own update of the rule. Observers on both sides agree that will almost certainly force the Trump White House to expand the number of people covered by the overtime rule, even if it doesn’t go as far as former President Barack Obama wanted.
Federal law says employees must be paid time-and-a-half once they work more than 40 hours in a week. However, businesses may exempt workers from the requirement if their duties are “managerial” in nature and they reach a certain salary threshold. Last year, the Labor Department announced that the threshold, previously $23,000 annually, would rise to more than $47,000 and would be updated every three years to reflect wage growth. The administration’s rule change would have meant that 4 million more workers would be eligible for overtime.
