Salaried Overtime Eligibility
Being paid a salary does not make you exempt from overtime. Three separate conditions have to be met at once - and the federal salary figure most sites published through 2025 was struck down by a court before it ever took effect.
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Three tests, not one
Federal law exempts an employee from overtime only if all three of these are true. Fail any one and you are non-exempt, and owed time-and-a-half for every hour past 40 in a workweek.
- Salary basis. You receive a predetermined amount each pay period that does not shrink because of the quantity or quality of your work. Docking a salaried employee's pay for a slow afternoon can destroy the exemption outright.
- Salary level. That amount meets a minimum. Federally, $684 a week - $35,568 a year.
- Duties. Your actual day-to-day work fits the executive, administrative, or professional definitions in 29 C.F.R. Part 541.
Job title appears nowhere on that list. "Assistant Manager," "Coordinator," "Analyst" and "Supervisor" carry no legal weight whatsoever. An assistant manager earning $45,000 who spends four days a week working a register clears the salary level comfortably and still fails the duties test - and is owed overtime for every hour past 40.
The reverse catches more people. Clearing the salary threshold does not make you exempt. It only makes you eligible to be exempt, if the duties fit as well. Salary is a necessary condition, never a sufficient one.
The 2026 salary thresholds
The federal floor is $684 a week. Six states set a higher one, and where a state figure is higher, the state figure is what applies to you.
| Where you work | Weekly | Annual | How it is set |
|---|---|---|---|
| Washington | $1,541.70 | $80,168.40 | 2.25 × state minimum wage ($17.13) |
| California | $1,352.00 (derived) | $70,304 | 2 × state minimum wage ($16.90) |
| New York - NYC, Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester | $1,275.00 | $66,300 (derived) | Fixed figure in the wage order |
| New York - rest of state | $1,199.10 | $62,353.20 (derived) | Fixed figure in the wage order |
| Alaska | $1,120.00 | $58,240 | 2 × state minimum wage ($14.00), changes each 1 July |
| Colorado | $1,111.23 | $57,784 (rounded) | Flat figure, adjusted annually for inflation |
| Maine | $871.16 | $45,300.32 | 3,000 × state minimum wage ($15.10), or federal if higher |
| Everywhere else - federal floor | $684.00 | $35,568 | Flat figure, unchanged since 2020 |
Figures marked "derived" are arithmetic, not government-published. California publishes only an annual figure and expresses the rule monthly; New York publishes only a weekly figure. Colorado calls $57,784 a "rounded annual equivalent" - the exact product is $57,783.96.
What happened to the 2024 increase
In April 2024 the Department of Labor issued a rule raising the federal threshold in two steps: $844 a week from 1 July 2024, then $1,128 from 1 January 2025.
The first step happened. Three days before it landed, a federal court in Texas blocked the rule - but only as it applied to the State of Texas as an employer of its own staff. Every other employer in the country was bound. From 1 July 2024 the federal threshold really was $844 a week, and by the finding of the same judge who later struck the rule down, "about one million employees' statuses changed."
Then on 15 November 2024 that court vacated the entire rule in Texas v. U.S. Department of Labor. The threshold dropped back to $684 overnight, and the second step to $1,128 never arrived at all.
Because the rule was set aside under the Administrative Procedure Act, it is generally treated as having been invalid from the outset. What that means for overtime actually earned during those four and a half months has never been squarely decided by a court. What is not in doubt is that the window was real: employers reclassified staff and raised salaries to comply, and a good number of those raises were never taken back.
The Code of Federal Regulations carried the 2024 text for another eighteen months regardless, until the DOL published a technical amendment on 15 May 2026 restoring the 2019 language. That lag is why so many pages still quote $844 or $1,128 today. Both figures describe a rule that no longer exists - but only one of them was ever real.
What most published tables get wrong
These figures are copied between sites more often than they are checked. Six errors are common enough to be worth naming:
- New York's rest-of-state figure is $1,199.10, not $1,200. The wrong number comes from multiplying the $16.00 minimum wage by 75. The wage order sets a fixed dollar amount instead. Downstate is genuinely 75 × $17.00 = $1,275.00, which is exactly why the mistake looks plausible.
- New York has no salary threshold at all for the professional exemption. Its thresholds bind executive and administrative employees only; for professionals the federal $684 applies. Tables routinely apply $1,275 to all three.
- New York's own guidance is out of date. The state Department of Labor's executive and administrative exemption FAQ pages still show figures from December 2021. Only the wage order PDFs are current.
- Colorado's threshold is not a multiple of its minimum wage, though it is constantly described as one. It is a flat figure adjusted for inflation each January, which is why minimum-wage-based projections of it are always wrong.
- Washington's small and large employer tiers are identical in 2026 - the first year they have matched. They split again on 1 January 2027.
- Hawaii's $4,000 a month is not an exempt salary threshold. It is a separate, duties-free exclusion from Hawaii's wage law, sitting in its own paragraph of the statute. It is also frequently quoted as $2,000, a figure superseded in June 2024 - including on Hawaii's own official statute website, which still has not been updated.
One threshold worth watching
Oregon sets its exempt salary as the regional minimum wage times 2,080, divided by 12. At the Portland metro rate of $16.80 that comes to about $672 a week - twelve dollars under the federal floor, so federal governs for now. Once Portland's minimum wage reaches $17.10, Oregon crosses over and becomes the seventh state. Because it is a formula rather than a legislated figure, no announcement will mark the day it happens.
If you think you have been misclassified
Salary level is the easy half to check - you either clear the number above or you do not. Duties are where most genuine misclassification lives, and they are harder to assess, because what matters is what you actually spend your time doing rather than what your job description claims.
If the salary test fails, nothing else matters: you are non-exempt, and the overtime calculator will tell you what those hours past 40 are worth. If it passes, the duties question is worth a conversation with your state labor department or an employment lawyer. Complaints to the U.S. Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division are free and can be filed confidentially.
FAQ
My employer calls me exempt. Can they just decide that?
No. Exempt status is a matter of fact, not employer designation. If the salary basis, salary level and duties tests are not all met, you are non-exempt regardless of what your offer letter, job title or pay stub says.
I am salaried and earn under $35,568. Am I automatically owed overtime?
Under federal rules, yes - failing the salary level test alone makes you non-exempt. A handful of narrow occupations are exempt without any salary test at all, including doctors, lawyers, teachers and outside sales employees.
Which figure applies if my state's threshold is higher than federal?
The one more favourable to you, which is the higher salary threshold - it makes exemption harder to establish. A Washington employee on $75,000 is below the state's $80,168.40 floor and therefore non-exempt, even though $75,000 is more than twice the federal figure.
Does my employer have to pay me the difference retroactively?
If you were misclassified, unpaid overtime is generally recoverable for two years, extended to three where the violation was wilful. Some states allow longer.
Can a bonus count toward the salary threshold?
Federally, up to 10% of the standard salary level can come from non-discretionary bonuses, incentives and commissions, provided they are paid at least annually. Some states are stricter.
Figures last verified: August 2026. Federal: 29 C.F.R. §541.600 as restored by the DOL technical amendment published 15 May 2026 (91 Fed. Reg., document 2026-09839); Texas v. U.S. Dep't of Labor, 756 F. Supp. 3d 361 (E.D. Tex. 2024) (vacating the 2024 rule); 738 F. Supp. 3d 807 (E.D. Tex. 2024) (28 June 2024 injunction, limited to Texas as an employer). States: Washington L&I salary threshold implementation schedule; California DIR and IWC Wage Orders; New York wage orders CR142 and CR141; Alaska Department of Labor; Colorado CDLE 2026 PAY CALC Order; Maine Department of Labor and 26 M.R.S. §663(3)(K). Every state figure was checked against the issuing agency, not a secondary summary.
💡 Did you know?
The last time these thresholds were set before this century was 1975: $155 a week for executive and administrative employees, $170 for professionals. They then sat untouched for twenty-nine years. By the time the rules were rewritten in 2004 and the figure became $455 a week, inflation had quietly done what no rulemaking did - turning a test meant to identify genuine executives into one that screened out almost nobody.