Workers Employees Covered Under Federal Minimum Wage
The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA or Act) is administered by the Wage and Hour Division (WHD). The Act establishes standards for minimum wages, overtime pay, recordkeeping, and child labor. These standards affect more than 135 million workers, both full time and part time, in the private and public sectors.
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The Act covers enterprises with employees who engage in interstate commerce, produce goods for interstate commerce, or handle, sell, or work on goods or materials that have been moved in or produced for interstate commerce. For most firms, a threshold of $500,000 in annual dollar volume of business applies to be covered (i.e., the Act does not cover enterprises with less than this amount of business).
In addition, the Act covers the following regardless of their dollar volume of business: hospitals; institutions primarily engaged in the care of the sick, aged, mentally ill, or disabled who reside on the premises; schools for children who are mentally or physically disabled or gifted; preschools, elementary and secondary schools, and institutions of higher education; and Federal, state, and local government agencies.
Employees of firms that do not meet the $500,000 annual dollar volume threshold may be covered in any workweek when they are individually engaged in interstate commerce, the production of goods for interstate commerce, or an activity that is closely related and directly essential to the production of such goods.
In addition, the Act covers domestic service employees, such as housekeepers, cooks, gardeners, nurses, or home health aides, if they work in a private home. These employees are subject to the minimum wage and overtime provisions if they receive at least $2,200 in 2020 from one employer in a calendar year, or if they work a total of more than eight hours a week for one or more employers. (This calendar year wage threshold is set by the Social Security Administration each year, and can be found at https://www.ssa.gov/oact/cola/CovThresh.html). For additional coverage information, see the Wage and Hour Division Fact Sheet #14: Coverage Under the FLSA .
The Act exempts some employees from its overtime pay and minimum wage provisions, and it also exempts certain employees from the overtime pay provisions only. Because the exemptions are narrowly defined, employers should check the exact terms and conditions for any applicable exemption by contacting their local Wage and Hour Division office.