2.6 Million Salaried Workers?

crawfod

This is a soapbox post, since it does not affect my organization, but a lot of our country's laws get changed based on what I consider to be questionable data. The DOL asserts there are 2.6 million salaried workers earning between $155 a week ($8,060 per year) and $455 a week ($23,660 per year), and the assumption is that a good number of these are classified as Exempt, which means they will now have to be changed to Non-exempt or paid at least $455.

How can there be so many people whose duties are such that they can meet Exempt status and yet earn less than $23,660? What kind of an organization can exist in today's markeplace and pay such key personnel so low? Or, do we have that many organizations who are simply and illegally misclassifying employees as Exempt to save OT pay because they can get away with it? Where does the DOL come up with such a number?

Somebody help me understand!

marc

Most of the numbers that get bandied about are designed to stop you from asking these types of questions. The fact that you are thinking makes you a dangerous American. I salute you.

Shadowfax

We've (maybe just me..and Don) been going at the govnmt on another post. You can be sure of two things about information disseminated by the gov: 1 It is done for a reason, and 2 the reason is not meant to benefit you. You could probably also say that the info, if not entirely ficticious, it is at least 10 years out of date. Best defense is to be suspicious. Keep askin'!!

Don D

Every Employment Security Agency (or whatever yours is called) does what they call 'gathering labor market information'. They collect it by sometimes dubious means, always publish it too late for it to have any utility and do vulgar and rude things to the data like: stroke it, massage it, sample it, ratio it, index it and average it. What do you think might be the result of my responding to one of their surveys by admitting to paying all of my workers $3.86 an hour ($155 a week)? Surely one of the geniuses back at their office on a calculator, would, while stroking and sampling my numbers, conclude that I am breaking the law.

I worked on that side of the fence for some years. I can tell you three certain facts: The information is inaccurate. The information is outdated. The information is not going to be of help to you once you get it.

This is a perfect example of Congress, the administration and the Department of Labor building a sand castle on the beach when the dam is treatening to bust.