The Labor Department plans to raise the threshold for overtime eligibility, meaning that more salaried workers will get time-and-a-half when they work more than 40 hours in a week. But don’t think this is some kind of big pro-worker move by the Trump administration. The new overtime threshold will be around $35,000, up from just $23,660 … but it’s a big cut from the increase the Obama administration had planned, only to see it blocked in a conservative court.
The Obama plan was to raise the overtime threshold to $47,476, which would, according to the Economic Policy Institute, have covered as many as 12.5 million workers who don’t currently get overtime no matter how many hours they work. That number included millions of victims of a dodge frequently used by employers, who can get so-called managerial employees doing nonmanagerial work for less than the minimum wage in some cases. The Trump plan would cover about half as many workers—better than nothing, but a big loss for millions of workers who should have been getting either more pay or more time for themselves.
So if you were making more than $23,660 but less than $35,000 and not getting overtime, congratulations: Things may be getting better for you. And if you are making between $35,000 and $47,476, well, the Trump administration denied you overtime rights that the Obama administration tried to give you. But please, nobody yield to the temptation to believe that this means Trump is half as good for workers as Obama was—what it says, instead, is that at its absolute best, when it does something surprisingly good, the Trump administration is only taking away half of what the Obama administration offered.