Labor Dept Proposes To Expand Overtime Eligibility

Under a proposal announced March 7, the Labor Department would expand overtime eligibility to include most salaried workers earning less than $35,000 a year. The threshold at present is $23,700. It is anticipated that the rule would expand overtime eligibility to around one million workers. The Obama administration set the salary threshold at about $47,500 when it proposed a new rule in 2016. A federal judge in Texas, an Obama appointee, suspended that rule before it took effect. The same judge later invalidated the Obama rule, which would have affected more than four million workers. The Trump administration has appealed the judge’s decision, but it asked the court to pause the appeal while it prepared a new rule. The proposal will be subject to a 60-day public comment period. The department expects it to take effect around January. The current threshold was set by the George W. Bush administration in 2004.