The Office of Management and Budget issued the Fall 2015 Unified Agenda and Regulatory Plan on Thursday, November 19, 2015.  The plan included an update on the expected publication date for the Department of Labor's proposed changes to the white collar exemption rule.

 

In publishing a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on this issue in July of 2015, the DOL proposed to update the regulations governing which white collar workers (executive, administrative and professional employees) may be eligible for exemption from minimum wage and overtime pay requirements under the Fair Labor Standards Act.  A key provision of the proposed rule included setting the standard salary level required for exemption at the 40th percentile of weekly earnings for full-time salaried workers.  The DOL projected that this change would raise the salary threshold for exemption from $455 per week to $970 per week, or $50,440 annually, in 2016.

 

The Comment Period on this Notice ended on September 4, 2015 and speculation has been rampant since then on the date the DOL will publish its final rule.  Several weeks ago, the Washington Post reported that the DOL's Solicitor Patricia Smith indicated during the November 2015 ABA Labor & Employment Law Annual Conference that the final regulations would be released in "late 2016."  Publication of the Fall 2015 Unified Agenda and Regulatory Plan suggests that the DOL currently intends for the final rule to be published in July of 2016.  The anticipated effective date of any new rule is presently unknown, although HEC will continue to monitor this issue and provide updates as they become available.