Barring any last-minute legal complications, employers may be paying overtime to more workers starting Monday.
July 1 is the date a federal rule lifting the salary threshold for overtime eligibility is scheduled to take effect.
Issued by the U.S. Department of Labor, the rule bumps the threshold to $43,888 per year, up from the current level of $35,568.
People with salaries below the threshold will be eligible for overtime pay if they work more than 40 hours in a week.
If the rule moves ahead as scheduled, the threshold will rise again in January to $58,656. Starting in 2027, the threshold will be updated every three years based on current wage data.
The litigation: It has been playing out in a Texas court, where a judge has reportedly been mulling steps to block the rule.
One question seems to be whether a block would affect just state employees in Texas or the nation as a whole.
Republicans in the U.S. Senate have introduced a resolution to override the regulation, though the measure is unlikely to win passage in the Democratic-controlled chamber.
The background: Overtime rules have been in flux for nearly a decade.
In 2016, under former President Barack Obama, regulators proposed raising the eligibility threshold from its then-level of $23,600 to about $47,000.
Employers balked and the proposal was eventually struck down in court.
The Trump administration bumped the threshold to its current level.
After President Joe Biden’s election in 2020, regulators began laying the groundwork for another increase.
The impact: The Biden administration estimates the increase taking effect Monday will affect about 4 million workers in its first year and trigger income gains of about $1.5 billion, whether through overtime pay or through raises that put people over the threshold.
