Burning the midnight oil is about to pay off for millions ofU.S. millennials.

The White House on Tuesday announced a new rule that willboost the number of Americans who qualify for time-and-a-halfpay whenever they work more than 40 hours in a given week. Amongthe biggest beneficiaries may be overworked young employees,toiling at startups and ad agencies or serving as restaurantmanagers, who so far haven't been getting the extra compensationfor working around the clock.

The new rule, which takes effect on December 1,doubles the salary thresholdfor overtime eligibility to $47,476 a year from the current$23,660. That means that employees earning an annual salary atthe new threshold or lower will automatically be eligible forovertime wages, just like hourly workers who already qualify forthis extra rate.

Workers across all age groups stand to benefit, but youngworkers can especially expect a boost, according to Ross Eisenbrey,vice president of the left-leaning Economic PolicyInstitute.

"Millennials are disproportionately affected by the overtime rule because theytend to be in the lower end of the wage spectrum," saidEisenbrey, who testified at a congressional hearing lastweek on the potential effects of the rule. "Though they onlyrepresent 28.2 percent of the salaried workforce, they make up 36.3percent of the newly covered."

According to Eisenbrey's calculations, the share of salaried25-to-34-year-olds directly benefiting from overtime protectionswill jump from 9.1 percent now to 38.4 percent under the newthreshold. For 16-to-24-year-olds, it will increase from 31percent to 64.1 percent. That translates to more than 4.5 millionnewly benefiting workers between the ages of 16 and 34 (and anadditional 8 million workers who are 35 or older). Hourlyworkers, who already get overtime protections, represent 58.5 percent of the Americanlabor force.

The rule marks the federal government's first adjustment toovertime standards in more than a decade. The thresholdwas last updated in 2004 after almost 30 years without an increase,and the Obama administration says inflation has beencutting into the real value of that threshold.

Still, some say such a large increase in the salary thresholdcould have unintended consequences. Researchers at George MasonUniversity released a study last month that argued thatemployers will respond by cutting base salaries to account forthe addition of overtime pay. Companies may also replacethese workers with a smaller number of higher-skilledemployees who earn salaries above the new threshold, theresearchers said.

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