Employment trends expert weighs in on private-sector overtime pay requirements
Overtime continues to be a developing hot button topic in states across the United States, with Washington being the latest state to draft a proposal which would offer overtime to professional workers who earn 1.5 times that of minimum wage.
“Workers who earn slightly more than $37,000 a year would be eligible for overtime when they work over 40 hours a week,” says Rob Wilson, President of Employco USA and employment trends expert. “While some say that these changes are good news for employees, others caution that it could spell financial ruin for small-business owners.”
Since 2016 when President Obama signed an overtime law which made employees who earned less than $47,476 a year eligible for overtime compensation, many small business owners have been fearful that they will not be able to keep pace with new requirements. When a Texas judge blocked that ruling, it offered a small reprieve until President Trump took office.
“Many business owners breathed a sigh of relief when President Trump backed away from President Obama’s 2016 decree,” says Wilson. “However, we still don’t know where Trump’s administration will land on when it comes to their take on private sector overtime pay requirements.”
Wilson says that we should expect to find out what President Trump’s overtime numbers will be sometime around Jan. 2019.
“The Labor Department is in review mode right now,” says Wilson. “They are looking at the number of people who are eligible for overtime (currently those who make $23,660 a year or less), and wondering how they should apply that to more workers.”
For more on this topic, please contact Rob Wilson at rwilson@thewilsoncompanies.com.