According to the Economic Policy Institute, many salaried workers are not covered by overtime protections, because the threshold of $23,660 per year has not kept up with wage growth or inflation and is therefore far too low. In 2016, the Labor Department updated the overtime rule to help workers get a fair return on their work. However, business interests and 21 states successfully attacked the rule in the courts, claiming it was a burdensome federal overreach, and the Trump administration has strongly signaled that it intends to weaken the rule.

“Wages have been flat for workers in this country for 35 years, because the business lobby has been pushing for workers to get a smaller slice of the pie,” said Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the EPI Policy Center and former chief economist of the Department of Labor. “The erosion of the ability of workers to get overtime pay is a textbook case of the power of businesses to take money out of the pockets of workers and pad the pocket of CEOs and top one-percenters. It’s time for workers to get a fair return on their work.”

The legislation was introduced by senators Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Patty Murray (D-Wash.), and Reps. Mark Takano (D-Calif.) and Bobby Scott (D-Va.). “People who work 50 or 60 hours a week should be paid the wages they’ve earned. Period,” said Brown. “When we don’t pay workers what they’ve earned, it drives down the value of work. Let’s make sure workers are paid for every hour they put in.”

The EPI said federal law requires that people working more than 40 hours a week be paid 1.5 times their rate of pay for the extra hours. But the law exempts salaried workers who make above a certain salary threshold and are deemed to have “executive, administrative, or professional” duties. 

The salary threshold is meant to help protect salaried workers with little bargaining power - for example, low- or modestly-compensated front-line supervisors at fast food restaurants - from being forced to work unpaid overtime. But, at $455 per week (the equivalent of $23,660 per year), the overtime threshold has been so eroded by inflation that it is now less than the poverty rate for a family of four. If the rule had simply been adjusted for inflation since 1975, such workers would be still be eligible today for overtime pay if they earned well over $50,000.

In 2016, the Department of Labor published "a highly vetted, economically sound rule" the EPI said, that would have increased the threshold to $913 per week ($47,476 per year). However, a district court judge in Texas ruled that the new overtime threshold is invalid. While the Trump DOL plans to appeal the judge’s ruling, they will not defend the $47,476 threshold. Instead, they intend to propose a new threshold, and have asked the court to stay the appeal while they engage in new rulemaking.

In Michigan, the EPI estimates that an additional 275,000 workers would be eligible for new or strengthened overtime protections as a result of raising the wage threshold to $47,476.

Legislation to increase accessibility to overtime pay has been around, in one form or another, for the past several years. Trump Administration Labor Department Secretary Alex Acosta has signaled that he agrees that the wage threshold should be raised, but he disputed the plan that would more than double the amount. He said such an expansion may "create a stress on the system." But he also said it was "unfortunate" the rule had not been updated in more than a decade because life has "become more expensive," as reported by The Washington Post.