FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION RELEASES NEW RULE WHICH COULD LEAD TO SALARY INCREASES ACROSS THE COUNTRY

TULSA, Okla. –

The Federal Trade Commission issued new rules that will affect many workers in Oklahoma. One of the rules has to do with salaried employees who work overtime.

“The terms you hear are if someone is exempt from overtime or non-exempt. If you’re nonexempt, you’re an hourly employee and if you work more than 40 hours in a work week, you’re entitled to time and a half,” said labor and employment attorney Keith Wilkes.

Wilkes is an attorney at Hall Estill Law Firm. He’s looked into the new FTC rule and said that with it, there will be a major change in who’s eligible for overtime.

“For anyone who is making at or near the minimum salary to be exempt from overtime, they’re getting a nearly 65 percent raise by January 1,” he said.

The current salary an employee has to make to be considered exempt from overtime is about $35,000. With the new rule from the FTC, the minimum will increase on July 1 to just over $43,000, and then again on January 1, 2025, to nearly $60,000.

Some think the increase was long overdue.

“The idea was that if you are working for this company, they don’t have to track your hours, but in compensation, they are giving you an adequate salary that you don’t have to work somewhere else that they are your sole employer for the most part,” said Jason Walter.

Walter is an associate professor of economics at the University of Tulsa. He said increasing the minimum salary for overtime exemption helps employees earn a more livable wage,

“In that $30,000 range, that’s not really the intention of what it was originally, and moving it back to $50,000 is probably more on par with what we would consider a professional salary.”

The FTC said the final rule will become effective 120 days after the publication in the federal register.