Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions is a semi-annual compilation of information about regulations under development by federal agencies, published in the spring and fall.
The government’s fall regulatory agenda just dropped. Highlights include overtime regulations slated for April 2024.
The DOL plans to finalize updates to the executive, administrative and professional exemption for overtime pay under the Fair Labor Standards Act.
- Increase the salary threshold for overtime exemptions from $684 per week ($35,568 annually for a full-year worker) to $1,059 per week ($55,068 annually for a full-year worker). The increase reflects the 35th percentile of weekly earnings of full-time salaried workers in the lowest-wage census region (currently the South).
- Increase the salary threshold for highly compensated employees from $107,432 annually to $143,988 annually. The increase reflects the earnings of the 85th percentile of full-time salaried workers nationally.
- Implement automatic increases every three years to all salary thresholds.
The sizable hike means that, if the rule goes into effect as proposed, employers may have many employees whose salary falls between the current threshold and the proposed new threshold, Coburn noted. Employers “will have to decide whether to increase the salaries for those employees to get them up over the new salary threshold, or to convert the employees to nonexempt and start paying them overtime.
In addition to being a costly proposed rule for businesses, there might be nonmonetary impacts on employees whose salary is between the current threshold and the proposed new one.
Based on the Regulatory Agenda highlights, DOL plans to move swiftly through regulations now that the Comments Period (11/7/23) has closed. The DOL is required to take each comment into account and then determine whether to adjust the proposed rule before it becomes final. The agency will then issue a final rule taking the comments into account, and it will then take effect within a few weeks of the final proposal being issued. Employers must start preparing for what could be big changes to your compensation plans.
Now is the time for Employers to make preparations for this impactful process.
