It has been a long time coming but today the Department of Labor finally issued the new final FLSA Overtime rule which will be effective January 1, 2020. What does this mean for your organization? It means that you will either be paying more to your currently exempt employees to raise their salaries to the new requisite salary level, $35,568 annually or $684 a week (up from the current $23,660 annually or $455 a week) to keep them exempt or it means that you will be paying more in overtime by having to reclassify those employees that were currently exempt under the old rules but no longer will be exempt under the final FLSA overtime rule.

A little bit of history here. The Obama administration had previously issued a final overtime rule that was going to be effective December 1, 2016. However, days before the effective date a federal district court judge in Texas, Amos Mazzant issued a nationwide injunction prohibiting implementation of the final overtime rule. Since then the Department of Labor has been deciding what to do and recently in March 2019 issued a proposed final overtime rule. The Department of Labor received thousands of comments from employers and trade groups on the proposed rule and spent months pouring over and evaluating those comments. Employers have been waiting patiently since then and today, September 24, 2019, the Department of Labor finally provided employers with the specifics for the actual final rule they have issued and the date upon which employers now have to comply which is January 1, 2020.

We can help you understand what this new final rule requires as well as how to ensure that you are in compliance and have properly classified your exempt employees under this new final rule. Contact us today at info@hrlearningcenter.com or 914-417-1715 to discuss how we can be of service to you or sign up for our live FLSA Final OT Rule webinar to learn everything there is to know about this final overtime rule under the FLSA.