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And when you look at who will benefit from the rule change, it’s not exactly a snapshot of a Donald Trump voter. Take a close look at the chart below. It depicts a May Economic Policy Institute analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The institute’s researchers estimated that as many as 12.5 million workers stand to gain some income or added free time thanks to the new rule.
Proponents of the measure—which include liberal economists such as those working for the Economic Policy Institute, labor unions and employee rights organizations—say forcing employers to pay these workers overtime will encourage some to take the cheaper option. These employers will raise some of their workers’ wages to the new $913 a week, no-overtime standard. Some will give additional hours to existing lower-paid workers already eligible for overtime pay or hire new workers to fill the gap. Either way, workers will get more money or free time.
The Washington Post May 19, 2016 -
Many employees see the changes as a welcome pay boost for work they’re already doing. Some 146,000 workers in California will be impacted by the new federal rules, the White House said Tuesday. “It will have a positive effect, a substantial positive effect on worker and part of that will mean a transfer of dollars from corporate profits and executive salaries to workers,” said Ross Eisenbrey, the vice-president of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, which studied the effect of a higher overtime pay threshold.
Los Angeles Times May 19, 2016 -
The administration says the change will impact some 4.2 million Americans in its first year, many of them in low-level retail management and administrative jobs. But it will also provide some relief to tens of thousands of academic researchers like Running. “Post docs average about $43,000 a year nationwide,” says Ross Eisenbrey, an economist and vice president at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington. “If they work 60 hours a week, they effectively make $15 an hour. That’s what fast food workers are asking for, and these are some of the best-educated Americans.”
Christian Science Monitor May 19, 2016 -
The Labor Department says about 4.2 million workers will gain overtime benefits as a result of the rule, though the populist Economic Policy Institute, which has argued strongly in favor of the rule, says this is a major undercount.
VOX May 19, 2016 -
The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) estimates that over 12.5 million workers who currently aren’t eligible for overtime pay will be eligible after the rule changes. These workers, 6.4 million of whom are women and 4.2 million of whom are parents, could previously have been denied overtime if they made over $23,660 a year and “their jobs were determined to be executive, administrative, or professional.” According to the EPI, these rules were created to make sure that “no one but higher-level workers with control over their time or tasks works overtime without getting paid for it.” Great in theory, but this didn’t work out so well in practice, especially since the threshold has not been raised in a decade. Raising that threshold from $455 a week to $913 a week will extend “overtime protection” to a huge number of workers across the U.S., and keep employers accountable, to boot.
Self Magazine May 19, 2016 -
The new rule is likely to be warmly welcomed by millions of American employees. A survey last year by Public Policy Polling found that 73 percent of more than 600 respondents said they would support “substantially increasing” Americans’ paid overtime threshold. Sixty-five percent of respondents even said they’d support extending overtime to anyone who makes $75,000 or less annually. “By restoring and strengthening working people’s right to overtime pay, the Department of Labor is protecting millions of Americans from overwork, and making sure they get paid their fair share when they do work more than 40 hours in a week,” Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, said in a statement Tuesday night.
U.S. News & World Report May 19, 2016 -
As a result, she said, a mere 7% of salaried employees currently have guaranteed overtime pay protections, compared to more than 60% of salaried employees in 1979. Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of nonprofit think tank the Economic Policy Institute, said the new overtime rule would bring that coverage closer to 23%. While the Obama administration said the proposal will extend overtime pay to nearly 5 million workers within the first year of its implementation, Eisenbrey believes this number is a conservative estimate, and he puts the number of affected workers closer to 12.5 million, which is how many workers earn salaries between the old threshold of $23,606 and the new threshold of $47,476. “All of them will have their rights improved,” he said. “They’ll either be newly entitled to overtime pay when they never were before, or they will have their rights strengthened and clarified, because, frankly, most people think that, if you’re paid a salary, you’re not entitled to overtime,” Eisenbrey said. Because the salary threshold has been so low, Eisenbrey explains, employers have been able to render people exempt who shouldn’t be by, for example, treating low-level assistant store managers or frontline store managers as executives.
Business Insider May 19, 2016 -
Many will begin receiving extra pay from employers for every bit of work they put in a week after 40 hours. Others are expected to receive pay raises to put them over the threshold. “The Obama administration is doing something very important for the wages of middle-class Americans who rightly feel like they’ve been left behind for many, many years,” Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, said. But just how many workers will be affected remains subject to debate. The Labor Department, which furnished the rules, estimated that 4.2 million employees currently exempted would win rights to overtime pay. Not everyone agrees with that estimate. “The Department of Labor is lowballing the number of people who will be affected,” Eisenbrey said. A 2015 study published by the EPI projected that more than 13 million workers would win overtime rights if the government raised the threshold to a level slightly above what was announced this week.
International Business Times May 19, 2016 -
Workers across all age groups stand to benefit, but young workers can especially expect a boost, according to Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. “Millennials are disproportionately affected by the overtime rule because they tend to be in the lower end of the wage spectrum,” said Eisenbrey, who testified at a congressional hearing last week on the potential effects of the rule. “Though they only represent 28.2 percent of the salaried workforce, they make up 36.3 percent of the newly covered.”
Bloomberg May 19, 2016 -
Research even indicates that the overtime rule can prod employers to add jobs, not eliminate them, so as to add extra help that can keep current employees’ hours below 40 a week. Both the Economic Policy Institute and Goldman Sachs have estimated it could lead to the addition of 120,000 jobs.
Think Progress May 19, 2016