Agenda - Council - 09/13/2022 - Laserfiche WebLink

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recipient submitted written justification to Treasury explaining how the premium pay was responsive. The final rule retains these two means of establishing premium pay in response to workers performing essential work and adds an additional means of demonstrating that premium pay is responsive. Under the final rule, a recipient may also show that premium pay is responsive by demonstrating that the eligible worker receiving premium pay is not exempt from the FLSA overtime provisions.267 This change will expand the number of workers eligible to receive premium pay268 and does not require recipients to provide written justification to Treasury regarding the workers who are not exempt from the FLSA overtime provisions, making the program easier to administer for recipients. Incorporating this change further simplifies application of the final rule for recipients because Treasury understands that most employers, public and private, are familiar with and are routinely required to apply the FLSA. With this addition, the final rule provides that premium pay is responsive to eligible workers performing essential work during the public health emergency if each eligible worker who receives premium pay falls into one of three categories: (1) the worker's pay is below the wage threshold, (2) the worker is not exempt from the FLSA overtime provisions, or (3) the recipient has submitted a written justification to Treasury. 267 Department of Labor, Overtime Pay, https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/overtime; see also 29 U.S.C. § 207. 268 Among workers that report working overtime, roughly 41-44 percent of workers earn above $50,000 per year, which is slightly less than the national average annual wage for all employees according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, available at https://www.bls.gov/oes/. See also U.S. Census Bureau, Basic Monthly CPS, January 2019 through December 2019, available at https://www.census.gov/data/datasets/time-series/demo/cps/cps-basic.html. Notes: Annual earnings reflect weekly wages multiplied by 52. Usual weekly earnings are computed by BLS to include earnings from work such as tips, overtime, regular wages, etc., but not non -labor sources of income such as government transfers and capital gains. Pre -overtime earnings are computed by taking the difference of usual weekly earnings and earnings from overtime last week and multiplying by 52. Note, some sources multiply weekly earnings by 50 instead of 52 to account for unpaid time off and holidays, so these figures may be slightly larger than those reported elsewhere. Either assumption may overestimate earnings if workers do not work year-round. 229