Legal-ish Disclaimer:
The links below are strictly for your informational enjoyment. We’re not attorneys—we don’t bill by the hour, use Latin in casual conversation, or own a single briefcase. As a consulting company, we’re just passing along useful resources for you or your organization to review.

If you need actual legal advice, we strongly suggest calling someone who passed the bar and doesn’t get their legal knowledge from courtroom TV dramas.

Salary Employees and Overtime Benefits

This section provides guidance and resources regarding salaried employees who may be eligible for overtime pay.

Goal: To clarify common misconceptions and offer helpful links about overtime eligibility for salaried workers.

Common Misconception:
"Since I’m salaried, my employer can require unlimited hours without additional pay."

Reality:
Not necessarily. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), most employees must be paid overtime (1.5x their regular rate) for hours worked over 40 in a workweek—unless they meet specific exemption criteria 

To be exempt from overtime, a salaried employee must:

• Be paid on a salary basis (a fixed amount not subject to reduction),

• Earn at least $684 per week (as of the 2019 rule currently in effect),

• Perform specific duties in executive, administrative, or professional roles 1.

If these conditions are not met, even salaried employees may be entitled to overtime pay.

Below is a link to the US Department of Labor. 

Please feel free to review: US Department of Labor

Salary Employee

Excerpt from DOL website:

• Key Provisions of the Final Rule

The Final Rule focuses primarily on updating the salary and compensation levels needed for Executive, Administrative and Professional workers to be exempt. Specifically, the Final Rule:

1. Sets the standard salary level at the 40th percentile of earnings of full-time salaried workers in the lowest-wage Census Region, currently the South ($913* per week; $47,476 annually for a full-year worker);

2. Sets the total annual compensation requirement for highly compensated employees (HCE) subject to a minimal duties test to the annual equivalent of the 90th percentile of full-time salaried workers nationally ($134,004); and

3. Establishes a mechanism for automatically updating the salary and compensation levels every three years to maintain the levels at the above percentiles and to ensure that they continue to provide useful and effective tests for exemption.