It’s beginning to feel a lot like … Groundhog Day in the wage-and-hour world. On Sept. 24, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) issued its final overtime rule (DOL’s final rule) that raises the minimum salary threshold for executive, administrative, and professional, employees from $455 per week ($23,660 per year) to $684 per week ($35,568 per year) to qualify as exempt from overtime pay under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The DOL estimates that its final rule, which will become effective Jan. 1, 2020, will extend overtime pay eligibility to 1.3 million workers. The salary threshold in the final rule is nearly identical to the $679 per week proposed earlier this year by the DOL.

Meanwhile, the Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry (L&I), which in June 2018 had issued proposed rulemaking to update the executive, administrative, and professional, (EAP) exemptions to the Pennsylvania Minimum Wage Act (PMWA), announced Oct. 17 that it submitted its final regulation (L&I’s final rule) to Pennsylvania’s Independent Regulatory Review Commission and legislative oversight committees. L&I’s final rule begins with the new federal level of $684 per week ($35,568 per year), but it does not end there. In its press release, L&I stated that, “the Wolf administration does not believe the new U.S. DOL rule truly reflects what Pennsylvanians are being paid.” L&I’s final rule provides for a phased-in increase of the salary level to $684 per week ($35,568 per year) as of Jan. 1, 2020, then to $780 per week ($40,560 per year) in 2121 and to $875 per week ($45,550 per year) in 2022. Following these increases, beginning in 2023 the salary level will be automatically adjusted every three years “at a rate equal to the 10th percentile of Pennsylvania workers who work in exempt executive, administrative or professional classifications.” L&I estimates that following implementation of its final rule, an additional 82,000 Pennsylvania employees will be eligible for overtime by 2022.

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