The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) requires employers to pay all covered workers a premium when they work overtime: 1.5 times the regular rate of pay for each hour beyond 40 in a week. Even some salaried employees with some managerial responsibilities, if they earn wages beneath a certain threshold, are covered by this protection, which is designed to spread available work and increase employment, and to raise the wages of employees who are required by their employers to work long hours. But far too many salaried workers are not covered by overtime or minimum-wage protections because the salary threshold at $23,660 per year has not kept up with wage growth or inflation and is far too low. The interactive map below compares the share of workers who currently fall under the overtime protection threshold in each state to how many more would be eligible for overtime protections under an updated threshold.

A key test of whether an employee should receive minimum-wage and overtime protections is the salary she receives. If it is a relatively low salary then it is safe to presume she is not a ‘bona fide professional, administrator, or executive’ excluded from overtime and minimum-wage protections. In the past, the minimum salary under which workers were guaranteed FLSA coverage was set at levels high enough so that 65 percent of the workforce was covered. (Above the threshold, overtime protections depend on showing that the employee’s primary duty is not executive, administrative, or professional.) But the level has been allowed to erode over the years and now covers only 11.7 percent of salaried employees. The salary level for coverage has fallen, in 2013 dollars, from $984 per week in 1975 to $455 today– a level just below the current poverty threshold for a family of four, meaning that only salaried workers earning poverty wages are assumed not to be bona fide managers, professionals, and executives.

Restoring the salary threshold to the 1975 level would increase FLSA overtime coverage so that, nationwide, about 47 percent of salaried employees (24 million employees) would be guaranteed coverage without having to examine their duties. And see the table below for a state by state breakdown of the number of salaried workers who fall under the current and the proposed overtime protection thresholds.