On March 13, 2014 President Obama signed a memorandum for the Secretary of Labor relating to updating and modernizing overtime regulations. The main thrust of this was to address people who are classified as managers who are exempt from the overtime rules. Now he has clarified his proposal.
To be exempt some of their work must be considered supervisory but there is a lot of leeway and some may spend most of their day doing manual, clerical or technical work with few management duties and yet still be exempt. People who are not exempt are governed by legal requirements that employers pay time-and-a-half for time worked beyond a 40-hour work week.
Under current law in order to be considered exempt as a manager a person’s salary must be greater than $455 a week ($23,660 annual). The new proposal will change this threshold to be $50,440 annually. The new threshold will be tied to inflation.
This is planned to take effect in 2016.