Your Pay Is About To Go Up (gawker.com)

The Department of Labor's overtime rule is expected to be updated some time later this summer, and when it does, you will soon be entitled to overtime pay if you make less than $50,000 per year. According to Gawker, "It now appears that even if you are a salaried employee or some sort of 'manager,' you will still be entitled to time-and-a-half pay for working more than 40 hours per week, as long as your total salary falls under the threshold." How did they come to this conclusion? Gawker points out that the Department of Labor promotes a Wall Street Journal story which says that "The threshold would be increased to $970, or $50,440 annually. That level is about the 40th percentile of weekly earnings for salaried workers." Hamilton Nolan writes, "This rule has been a matter of political contention for years. But now that it is actually approaching, its import is becoming clear: overtime pay, which has long been isolated to a minority of workers, is about to be extended to almost the entire middle class."

Comments

Whose pay?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't everyone here a tech worker? Does anyone here actually make under 50k?

Re:Whose pay?

[NiteMair]

right afterwards got hired at a new job that pays closer to $78k a year. I'll be doing basically the same work at the new job.

Each time I've been laid off (twice in my career), I've landed a better job getting paid more money...

So being laid off isn't always a terrible thing - sometimes it's really just the spark that ignites the job hunt for a better paying job. I know the first time it happened my salary pretty much tripled with the next job - which suggests that the company I had been with for 5 years had been taking advantage of my accumulated skills and entry-level pay.

In my case, I ended up doing software development for different industries each time, which also gave me an opportunity to learn something new.

I Dunno About "Entire Middle Class"

[Anonymous Coward]

Around where I live, $50K, including said overtime, is damn near poverty.

Re: I Dunno About "Entire Middle Class"

[AmiMoJo]

Dude... Fly economy class. It costs a fraction as much and isn't much worse than business class. A little less legroom (irrelevant for kids) and a smaller TV screen, and either way you are still stuck inside a tin can for 12 hours. Stop pissing away money on expensive hotels too. A hotel is where you sleep between doing interesting stuff, as long as it's clean that's all you need.

It's no wonder your kids are costing you so much when you insist on luxuries for them. Be a bit more frugal, spend your money on stuff that really matters like good food and tickets to attractions. Even the GP's $1700/month on one child is an awful lot... Private school and riding lessons perhaps?

No, that means your pay is about to go down

[SuperKendall]

If the pay for overtime is going to go up, that means it's less likely that a business will want you to work overtime.

But they may not be able to quite get everything done they need to, so they will hire a part time worker...

But then that's too many extra hours, so that means your full time to overtime job gets cut back to a half-time position also. Now they have two people working 60 hours instead of one person working 50, with no overtime.

Re:No, that means your pay is about to go down

[Wycliffe]

If the pay for overtime is going to go up, that means it's less likely that a business will want you to work overtime.

That's kindof the point. The point of overtime law is to discourage companies from forcing people to work more than 40 hours per week. So I actually disagree with the headline. Likely people's pay is not going to go up significantly but rather many companies will hire more people to fill the gap. As a side benefit this should help unemployment. I work at a tech company and we pay everyone hourly. I think salaried is stupid and we should just do away with it. If they track your hours then you should automatically be hourly. If you don't set your own schedule then you should be hourly. If you can't leave at noon because things are slow then you should be hourly. If you don't have a set amount of tasks that once finished you can leave then you should be hourly. Most people shouldn't really be salaried. Nurses or anyone who has to be at their station a minimum number of hours shouldn't be salaried. Salaried should be reserved for the accountant that comes in, balances the books, and leaves or other such jobs where you can actually run out of work and go home early if you get done early.

Divide et impera

[Trachman]

Take arbitrarily selected number, 40%.

Those above it: shove it

Those below it: take it

Reality is that most of unpaid overtime is done by faceless, nameless IT workers, project managers, accountants, office workers with the salary band of $50K to $100K.