By Mike O’Brien bio Jan. 1, 2020 was the deadline to comply with new FLSA overtime rule. At the end of September the Department of Labor issued its long-awaited final rule updating the salary level test for white-collar overtime exemptions under the Fair Labor Standards Act. Under the new rule, the minimum salary level for exemption is raised from $455 a week to $684 a week, or $35,568 annually. The change marks the first increase in the minimum salary level to take effect in more than 15 years. It is expected to bring overtime eligibility to over a million employees who are ineligible under the current threshold. Although the DOL released a final rule raising the salary level in 2016, the rule was blocked by a federal district court and never took effect. The new rule became effective on Jan, 1, 2020. As always, employers should remember that the overtime exemptions depend not only on meeting the salary level test (the employee receives at least $684 per week), but also the salary basis test (the employee is paid a predetermined, fixed salary not subject to reduction because of variations in the quality or quantity of work performed), and the job duties test (the employee primarily performs administrative, […]