Trump’s Overtime Pay Cut Tracker

The Trump administration has abandoned the Department of Labor’s overtime pay regulations. It’s going to cost workers $1.2 billion per year.

In 2016, the Department of Labor strengthened a regulation requiring employers to pay workers overtime when they work more than 40 hours a week. The regulation hadn’t been adequately updated in over 40 years—and in that time, it had eroded to a cover only a fraction of the people it was designed to protect.

The DOL’s overdue attempt to restore lost pay to America’s workers was blocked in the courts by business interests, and on October 31, 2017, the Trump administration made clear in legal proceedings that it would not defend the rule.

The result will be over a billion dollars in lost wages each year, and 12.5 million workers left with weakened protections—or none at all. Here are the numbers.

What workers will lose each year without updated overtime regulations

  • Wages lost since the rule was abandoned 10/31/17
    $1,200,000,000
  • Wages lost per month
  • Wages lost per week
  • Wages lost per day

Source: Department of Labor. View methodology

Economic Policy Institute • Center for American Progress

Methodology

The $1.2 billion annual increase in wages resulting from the 2016 overtime pay rule was estimated by the Department of Labor in the economic impact study that accompanied the rule. The estimate is from a model based on empirical research on how businesses respond to overtime pay regulations. A summary of the economic impact study can be found here.

The state breakdown of that national figure is based on an EPI analysis of the weekly earnings and overtime hours of workers directly affected by the overtime rule in each state and the District of Columbia using Current Population Source (CPS) Outgoing Rotation Group data for 2015 and 2016. As with the federal government’s analysis of the overtime rule, this analysis does not take into account higher overtime thresholds at the state level.