States’overtime threshold plans go further than that proposed by the Obamaadministration; in Washington state has proposed raising thethreshold to $79,872 beginning in 2026.
Disappointed by the Trump administration’s inaction on theissue, a number of states are moving to make moreworkers eligible for mandatory overtime pay.
|In the final year of President Obama’s administration, theDepartment of Labor issued a new rule that would raise the salary threshold at which workers canbe exempt from mandatory overtime wages. The proposed rule raisedthe threshold, which was last raised in 2004, from $23,660 to$47,476.
|Related: New overtime salary threshold proposal would cover1.3 million more workers
|However, several Republican attorneys general sued to blockimplementation of the rule and in November 2016 a federal judgeagreed that the Obama proposal was an overreach. Although the Obamaadministration appealed the ruling, the Trump administrationabandoned that appeal several months later.
|In March, the Trump administration proposed raising thethreshold to $35,308. The rule has not yet been finalized but sofar it appears to have been warmly received by employer groups, whoview it as a middle ground between the status quo and the Obamaproposal.
|Labor advocates, however, say the Trump proposal falls far shortof what is needed and prevents millions of non-management employeesfrom getting paid for overtime hours.
|Some state governments agree. In Pennsylvania, Gov. Tom Wolflast year introduced a plan that mirrors the Obama plan, and willgradually increase the threshold to $48,000.
|Other states are going further. The Department of Labor inWashington state has proposed raising the threshold to $79,872beginning in 2026. In Maine, the threshold is currently set at$33,000, but state lawmakers are pushing to increase it to $55,000by the end of 2022.
|In Massachusetts, lawmakers are considering a bill that wouldalso increase the threshold over the next few years: to $35,000 in2021; $45,000 in 2022; $55,000 in 2023; and $64,000 in 2024.
|Commenting on the Massachusetts legislation, the Economic PolicyInstitute, a left-leaning think tank, said the proposal wouldsimply be restoring the overtime opportunities that existed forworkers in the past.
|“If the 1975 threshold, which covered nearly 63 percent of thesalaried workforce, were simply raised with inflation up to todayand projected inflation out to 2024, it would be equal to $1,268per week—nearly identical to the threshold proposed (in theMassachusetts legislation,” wrote David Cooper of EPI in June.
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