According to the National Restaurant Association, there are roughly 40 million workers in the United States. Of those, about 40 percent are casual employees. They are workers who are paid per shift, usually through an hourly rate and are paid for the hours they work. The other 60 percent of U.S. workers are salaried professionals -- and they are eligible for overtime pay when they work more than 40 hours in a week. There are also salaried employees who may not be paid on a per-shift basis. Those workers are sometimes called supervisors, supervisors who perform the work of more than one employee, and some employees are called managers.
How many employees in the United States are covered by a Fair Labor Standards Act (FLEA) work regulation?
The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLEA) includes both salaried and hourly employees who are covered by it. Salaried employees are workers who receive their pay directly from their employer, such as employees of state or local government; those in higher education (such as employees at for-profit vocational schools, and those who have completed a post-secondary education at an accredited public or private institution of higher learning); or employees employed as a domestic servant. Hourly employees, who received their wages from an employer, and those who do not have a wage-earning job at all, are also covered by the FLEA.
A number of states have passed laws stating that they do not require employers to pay overtime to salaried workers; however, many states still require employers to pay employees for hours they work over 40 in a week. For example, Alaska, Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Washington, Wisconsin, Wyoming, and West Virginia all have laws in place saying that they do not require employers to pay people overtime for work performed over 40 hours in a week if those employees are salaried employees. In most of these states, however, employers are required to pay the employees that work more than 40 hours in a week for any hours worked over 40 in a week, without regard to whether the employees were salaried.
The FLEA does not specifically protect full-time workers, such as managers and supervisors who receive direct pay from their employers rather than a salary--this can include some, but certainly not all, private sector employees.