The employment law community remains abuzz with predictions as to exactly when the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) will issue its Final Rule setting the new minimum salary level for employees to qualify for “white-collar” exemptions to the Fair Labor Standards Act’s (FLSA) overtime requirements. The salary level proposed in the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) published in the Federal Register in July 2015 would more than double the current salary level for “white-collar” employees to be exempt from the FLSA’s overtime requirements. Such an increase in the salary level would have wide-reaching implications for employers and employees alike. DOL Secretary Thomas E. Perez has predicted that, “on an annual basis, workers will get roughly $1.2 to $1.3 billion in additional wages as a result of this rule.”

While the Office of Management and Budget released a timetable Nov. 19 indicating that the Final Rule would issue by July 2016, Perez has been quoted in recent media reports stating that the DOL is planning to publish the Final Rule this spring. This is in contrast to widely disseminated media reports of comments made by Solicitor of Labor M. Patricia Smith at the American Bar Association’s Labor and Employment Law Conference in early November that the Final Rule would be released in “late 2016.” Although it is impossible to fully predict when the Final Rule will be published, employers should be proactively assessing the DOL’s NPRM and its impact on their workforce and work flow well in advance of the publication of the Final Rule.

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