Hire Your First Employee. Rhonda Abrams

a national minimum wage, guaranteed time and a half overtime pay for certain jobs, set standards for the employment of minors and prohibited oppressive child labor, and established guidelines for employer recordkeeping. These employment standards apply to employees in the private sector and in Federal, State and local governments.

      

Non-Exempt: Employees who are covered by the Fair Labor and Standards Act and, by extension, by most state and city labor laws. You must pay them at least the federal (and state) minimum wage, and they must receive overtime pay of 1.5 their regular rate of pay when they work more than 40 hours in a week.

      More from the Department of Labor

       Section 13(a)(1) of the FLSA provides an exemption from both minimum wage and overtime pay for employees employed as bona fide executive, administrative, professional and outside sales employees. Section 13(a)(1) and Section 13(a)(17) also exempt certain computer employees. To qualify for exemption, employees generally must meet certain tests regarding their job duties and be paid on a salary basis at not less than $455 per week. Job titles do not determine exempt status. In order for an exemption to apply, an employee’s specific job duties and salary must meet all the requirements of the Department’s regulations.

       —U.S. Department of Labor

      

Exempt: Employees who are NOT covered by FLSA laws. They do not have to be paid overtime or minimum wage, however to be exempt, they must meet criteria relating to their job responsibilities and minimum pay level.

      Federal laws are often augmented with state or local labor laws that mandate additional worker protections, such as paid lunch breaks or other breaks, for non-exempt workers.

      Once again, determining exactly who can be considered exempt can sometimes be murky. But here’s what the government tries to accomplish—protect wage earners, especially those who perform routine work for the lowest wages, often on an hourly basis. They want to make certain these workers are not mis-used—overworked without additional pay, paid below minimum wage, and so on.

      On the other hand, the government wants to leave businesses reasonable flexibility with other types of employees. For example, it would be downright silly to require a major corporation to give an executive, earning hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, overtime pay just for working more than 40 hours a week.