Depending on whether you’re an hourly or salaried employee, odds are you have different feelings about that 41st hour of weekly work. Or the 51st hour. Or the 61st. You get the picture.
As hourly employees, also referred to as “nonexempt,” you are usually compensated* for work over and above 40 hours a week at a rate of at least time and a half your pay. This is thanks to the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, the same act that oversees the federal minimum wage, which rose to $5.85 this past summer. (Fun fact: Back in 1938, the work week was considered 44 hours. This, of course, was the same era when workers had to walk uphill both ways to work in snow with no shoes…)
Overtime pay is a perk not available to most salaried employees, unless companies decide to kick it in on their own. It may not seem like a big deal at first glance – some extra change here and there. But think about this: the average American works a 46-hour work week, according to a National Sleep Foundation study. Even if Joe Worker was making the federal minimum wage of $5.85, that’s nearly $53 a week in overtime pay. Project that out to a year and it’s more than $2,700, enough for a swank Bahamian cruise or that kitchen remodel you’ve been patiently awaiting.
If you’re an hourly worker, you may be saying to yourself, “That sounds great and everything, but don’t salaried workers make a ton more than me when their salary is projected out to an hourly rate?”
Not so fast. According to SnagAJob.com’s Labor Happiness Survey, almost 40 percent of America’s hourly workers reported a household income of $50,000 or more. Not too shabby.
*To learn more about the Fair Labor Standards Act, click here.
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