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Photo provided courtesy Pixabay.com.<\/em><\/p>\n By Sam Cook, Staff Writer<\/p>\n The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) is the federal labor law that sets the $7.25\/hour minimum wage and requires employers to pay certain non-exempt employees time-and-a-half for time worked exceeding 40 hours per week. [1] <\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 Pennsylvania has its own fair labor law entitled the Pennsylvania Minimum Wage Act (PMWA). [2] <\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n Generally, overtime pay is not required for executive, administrative, or professional positions that are paid on a salaried basis and meet a minimum income salary threshold. [3] <\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 Title alone does not dictate which positions are exempt, but rather job duties.\u00a0Executives generally must be managers who direct full-time employees, have authority to hire or fire employees, or may be compensated by incentive bonuses or commissions. [4] <\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n Administrative positions generally refer to \u201coffice or nonmanual work\u201d related to general business operations, like consultants or claims adjusters. [5] <\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n Finally, professional roles generally mean work that requires specialized instruction or advanced knowledge, or imagination or artistic talent.\u00a0 Examples include lawyers, doctors, and engineers. [6] <\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n The provisions of PWMA are similar to the FLSA, but there are three significant differences where Pennsylvania\u2019s law is more stringent:<\/p>\n Under the federal law, after an employee makes more than $107,432 per year, they are considered \u201chighly compensated\u201d and no longer qualify for overtime pay.\u00a0 Pennsylvania does not recognize this exception, and as such, employers must still pay 1.5x overtime for otherwise eligible employees. [7] <\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n This archaic-sounding exception under the FLSA exempts from minimum wage and overtime pay requirements computer systems analysts, programmers, software engineers, and other such IT workers, as long as they are paid at least $27.63 per hour. [8] <\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 Pennsylvania again does not recognize this exception, which means employers must treat these employees as they do all others similarly situated employees. [9] <\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n Finally, Pennsylvania recently hiked the salary threshold that employees must earn to be considered \u201cexempt\u2019 under the PMWA. [10] <\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 The Department of Labor and Industry amended its regulations in early October to increase these minimums. [11] <\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 The practical effect of this amendment is to expand eligibility for non-exempt status, or those who are entitled to overtime.\u00a0 The stated purpose of the amended rule is to \u201cprotect employees from unreasonably low wages not fairly commensurate with the value of the services rendered.\u201d [12] <\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n The new Pennsylvania salary thresholds will increase each year for the next two years according to the following schedule:<\/p>\n\n
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