Todd Masuda discusses The Department of Labor's recently updated regulations on overtime exempt status, a change employment lawyers have been anticipating for many months. The change was announced on May 18th, and the new regulations become effective December 1, 2016.
The first thing employers should know is that the new regulations are not dramatic. They are more along the line of tweaks that re-establish the significance of certain salary requirements in the existing law. The changes do not change the way overtime rules work, and the default rule remains the same: All employees must receive overtime (time and a half for each hour worked over 40 hours per week) unless they qualify for an exemption from overtime. There are dozens of exemptions to this rule, most of them industry specific, but the regulatory change affects the main “white collar” exemptions, which are the executive, administrative, and professional exemptions, and also encompasses computer employees.
