NEW REPORT: New Jersey Workers Have Lost $7.5 Million Due to Federal Inaction On Overtime

In 2016, the Department of Labor proposed to raise the overtime salary threshold, but a Texas district court blocked it from taking effect. As a result, New Jersey workers will have lost $7.5 million in wages as of this Sunday, April 1^st, according to a new report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).

The federal overtime salary threshold of $23,660 is far too low, and only of full-time salaried workers in New Jersey qualify as a result. While in 1975 more than 60 percent of the national workforce qualified for overtime, today less than 7 percent do. In New Jersey, the percent of workers that qualify is 8.3 percent.

“Thanks to a lack of action on the part of the federal government, hundreds of thousands of New Jersey workers are losing out on overtime wages that they would have earned,” said Sara Cullinane, Director of Make the Road New Jersey. “The overtime threshold is sorely outdated and should be raised. Failing to act swiftly is only harming hard working New Jerseyans and their families, and that negatively effects our economy as a whole.”

The report calls for New Jersey lawmakers to increase the state’s overtime salary threshold to $59,124, which is equivalent to the 40^th percentile of earnings for full-time salaried workers in the Northeast region of the United States.

“Raising the state’s overtime threshold to $59,124 would bring overtime into the modern era and benefit the workers it was meant to when originally conceived,” said Brandon McKoy, Director of Government and Public Affairs for New Jersey Policy Perspective. “By doing this, we would help 622,000 New Jersey workers which is 30 percent of the salaried workforce, and that would provide a boost our economy which helps us all.”

https://www.epi.org/multimedia/overtime-pay-cut/#/?state=nj