Most salaried workers in the United States can still earn overtime. The Fair Labor Standards Act owes time-and-a-half past 40 hours to nonexempt employees, and the whole fight is over who counts as exempt. After a federal court vacated the 2024 rule in November 2024, the salary floor stands at $684 a week, or $35,568 a year (DOL; Texas v. DOL, N.D. Tex., Nov. 15, 2024).
This is information, not professional advice: it explains how the exemption framework works as of the current rule, not what any individual employer owes. A specific dispute belongs with the Wage and Hour Division or counsel.
Who is exempt from overtime, in short?
An exempt employee must clear two hurdles at once: a salary basis and salary level test, plus a duties test. Paying above the salary floor never settles the question alone. The employee's actual duties must fit an exemption — executive, administrative, professional, outside sales, or certain computer occupations — and the department reads those duties narrowly.
Title-based titles are irrelevant. A vice president who primarily files paperwork fails the administrative test the same as anyone else would.
What is the current salary threshold?
The department's 2019 rule set the standard floor at $684 per week, $35,568 annually, with $107,432 for highly compensated employees under a lighter duties test (DOL, 2019 rule). The 2024 rule raised the floor in steps to $844 and then $1,128, but a federal district court vacated the rule nationwide on November 15, 2024, before the second step could bind (Texas v. DOL, 2024). Pay levels returned to the 2019 figure.
That vacatur is the single most important date in the current terrain of the rule. Employers who raised salaries mid-2024 were not required by federal law to cut them back, but the legal floor is the old one.
How do the duties tests actually work?
Each exemption has its own elements, and the primary duty controls. The executive exemption requires managing the enterprise or a department, directing at least two full-time employees, and hiring or firing input that carries real weight. The administrative exemption requires office work related to management or general business operations and discretion on significant matters. Professional status turns on advanced knowledge in a field of science or learning, normally shown by a degree.
State rules can sit on top. Several states, California most prominently, run their own salary floors and stricter duties standards, and an employer must satisfy whichever regime treats the worker as nonexempt.
What is the salary basis rule?
Salary basis means a predetermined amount not subject to reduction based on the quality or quantity of work. Improper deductions for a day's absence or a slow week can strip the exemption entirely, for every employee in the same classification, if the employer has an actual practice of making them (DOL regulations, 29 CFR Part 541).
That aggregate remedy surprises employers most often. One policy applied carelessly can expose the whole category, because the department reads the exemption as a privilege conditioned on compliant pay practice, not a label.
How is a misclassification claim pursued?
Two routes exist and do not require a lawyer to start. A worker can file a complaint with the Wage and Hour Division, which investigates and can recover back wages for up to two years, three for a willful violation (FLSA, as administered by DOL). A worker can also file a private lawsuit for back pay and, where a court finds a violation, an equal amount in liquidated damages.
Records matter more than recollection. Pay stubs, schedules and job descriptions in use at the time carry the argument, in either forum.
One historical anchor explains why the threshold moves at all. The modern framework descends from 2004, when the department first set a bright-line salary floor that updated only when a new rule was issued, rather than indexing to inflation (DOL, 2004 rule). Without indexing, the exempt share of the salaried workforce grows silently between rules, which is exactly what happened across the 2010s and why each successive administration has proposed its own number.
The practical checklist for a worker is short. Compare weekly pay against the current floor — $684 as of the 2024 vacatur (DOL; court record, 2024). Compare actual duties against the exemption elements, using the job description the employer actually operates under, not a recruiting post. And check the state floor, because several exceed the federal figure and the higher one controls for work performed in that state.
Liquidated damages deserve emphasis, because they double the exposure. Where a court or the division finds a violation, the FLSA provides an additional equal amount in liquidated damages unless the employer proves good faith (FLSA, 29 U.S.C. §216). A misclassification that cost a worker $10,000 in unpaid overtime can therefore cost the employer $20,000, per employee, for the lookback period.
What should readers watch going forward?
The 2024 vacatur is a district-court decision, and the department's appellate posture has shifted with administrations, so the threshold question is genuinely open. The evidence as it stands: the binding federal floor is $684 a week, set in 2019, after the November 2024 ruling (DOL; court record, 2024). Anything higher is a state requirement or a contract term, not the federal baseline.
What remains unknown is whether the department will propose a new rule and on what number. This publication reports the framework without predicting outcomes, and readers should check the department's current postings before relying on any figure in a live dispute.
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