Labor Law tracks the written rules: bills in Congress, Department of Labor rulemakings, state employment statutes and the Federal Register pipeline. Every story states what changes, for whom and when it takes effect.
Bills, agency rulemakings and compliance requirements that change how workplaces are governed, traced from proposal to effective date.
A proposed rule published February 27, 2026 would rescind the 2024 classification standard and restore a two-factor economic-reality test — and quietly extend it to family and migrant-worker statutes.
The federal leave law protects the job but not the paycheck; state programs increasingly do the reverse. When both cover the same worker, the two usually run at the same time.
Congress holds a rarely used undo button for federal regulations: a simple-majority joint resolution, moved within 60 legislative days of a rule's publication, that erases the rule and bars any substantially similar one.
From $455 a week in 2004 to $1,128 and back to $684: how the salary level that decides who must be paid overtime moved, and why it reverted overnight in November 2024.
The federal wage law sets a floor of $7.25 an hour but says almost nothing about when wages are paid. State statutes fill that space, and they diverge sharply on pay frequency, deductions, and the deadline for a final check.
The FTC's 2024 noncompete rule was set aside nationwide by a Texas court before its effective date. What remains: a patchwork of state statutes that void or limit noncompetes and, increasingly, training-repayment terms.