Proposed Rule on Overtime Salary Level Now Projected for January 2019

The Department of Labor expects to issue a proposed rule on the salary level for the executive, administrative, and professional employee exemptions in January 2019. The announcement came through the Office of Management of Budget’s semiannual Unified Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions, which was released last week. The unified agenda provides a report by each department and agency on its near-term plans to issue or rescind regulations. In the fall 2017 unified agenda, DOL had projected October 2018 for issuance of the proposed rule.

In the latest unified agenda, DOL stated that the proposed rule “will be informed by the comments received in response to the Request for Information” issued by DOL in July 2017. In the American Bankers Association’s comments to the RFI, the association urged DOL to adopt a single national salary level, computed according to the methodology DOL used in its 2004 rulemaking. ABA also opposed any automatic adjustments to the salary level and argued that no changes to the duties tests should be made at this time. For more information, contact ABA’s Jonathan Thessin.