exempt and hourly

Alice1

What is the difference between an exempt employee and an hourly employee for the purpose of determining how many of each a company has.

Hatchetman

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 08-12-02 AT 08:18PM (CST)[/font][p]Generally, an "exempt" employee must be salaried...that means he or she gets a pre-determined amount of compensation for specific period of time -- usually a week -- without regard to variations in hours worked, the quality or quantity of work produced. The employee is paid for a job, not for hours worked.

An hourly employee is a "non-exempt" employee and is paid for each hour (or part of an hour) he or she works. Thus, an employee must be paid the minimum hourly wage set by your state's minimum wage law (or possibly the federal minimum wage), and must be paid time and a half overtime for the any time worked in excess of 40 hours in one work week.

There's a little more too it.

The fact that you are asking the question that you have indicates to me that you may need to review the basic provisions of the applicable law.

Federal law, the Fair Labor Standards Act, which you can locate at the US Department of Labor website, is the primary law that addresses your question. States may also have similar laws that vary from the federal provisions, such as some provisions in California.

FLSA provides that every applicable position under FLSA is to be "non-exempt status" UNLESS the employer can show that it can be on "exempt status." Non-exempt means that the position must be paid minimum wage and must be paid time and a half overtime for hours worked in excess of 40 per work week. Consider this the "default" status.

Exempt means that the position is exempt from overtime and minimum wage requirements of FLSA. In order for a position to be exempt it must meet certain requirements in the types of duties it performs -- generally, they must be managerial, professional or administrative in nature. FLSA establishes tests that determine when a position can be "deemed" exempt (although the employer can still make it non-exempt if it wants to).

The following link will take you to the DOL website summary on FLSA:
[url]http://www.dol.gov/asp/programs/handbook/minwage.htm[/url]

Also, for specific guidance on understanding the requirments of FLSA, use DOL's "FLSA Advisor": [url]http://www.dol.gov/elaws/flsa.htm[/url]

Once you establish which positions are exempt and which are non-exmept, then you just count each. There is no limit on the number of exempt positions an employer can have as long as they are all warranted under the law.

Alice1

Thank you for response. It answered my question.