FLSA: Exempted and Non-Exempted Employees

FLSA stands for Fair Labor Standards Act, which mandates employers to pay fair wages to workers or employees. However, this act is not applicable to all the employees. There are employees who are exempted from this law. Also, there are some employees who are not exempted from this law. Thus, many employees and employers are confused of this law. The employees are categorized as exempted and non-exempted employees under this law, with respect to the overtime and pay laws. So, to breakdown the confusion and bring out the clarity, we would like to give a brief information on the exempted and non-exempted employees of this act.

Exempted employees and their job responsibilities
Under the definition of this law, some jobs are considered to be exempted from the FLSA along with employees of airlines and sales. The exempted employees are not covered and protected under FLSA and so they are not entitled for the overtime pay. Under any of the below points, the employee is an exempted employee:

• If the employee is paid approximately $24, 000 per year
• If the employee performs the exempted job duties that include high level duties regarding the overall operations of the company
• If the employee is paid on a salary basis, but the salary requirement is not applicable for certain professions that are paid hourly including schoolteachers, physicians etc.

Some of the exempted job duties are, executives who supervises more than two or three employees or if he has the primary duty in the management; professional employees such as, physicians, architects, teachers, certified nurses and other employees performing jobs relevant to advanced training and education, writers, journalists etc.; Administrative employees who support business in human resource, public relations etc. and it is defined under FLSA as office or non-manual work that is directly related to management and main component that involves the exercise of independent opinion and judgment about matter of significance.

Non-Exempted employees
Employees who are non-exempt of this act are paid the overtime pay and minimum wage for the hours worked above the 40 hours in a given week. Under the rules of FLSA, employee is entitled to time and on half of their regular payment for every hour of the overtime. Especially the employees based on the hours wage are in fact the non-exempted employees.

Therefore, with this information employees and employers can get clarity on the FLSA exempted and non-exempted employee job duties, minimum wages and overtime.