56 | Massachusetts Wage & Hour Peculiarities, 2025 ed. © 2025 Seyfarth Shaw LLP According to the federal regulations, to qualify as exempt pursuant to the white-collar exemptions, an employee must: 1. Be paid at or above a certain compensation level; 2. Be paid on a salary, rather than hourly, basis;305 and 3. Perform certain exempt duties.306 While the first two elements of the test are the same regardless of which white collar exemption an employer applies, with respect to the third element, there are separate “duties” tests for each of the executive, administrative, and professional exemptions. The first and second parts of the white-collar exemption test (i.e., the level of compensation an employee must earn and the salary basis requirement) are discussed below. The duties tests for each of the white-collar exemptions are then addressed separately. 1. Minimum Compensation Requirements Generally speaking, employees working in an executive, administrative, or professional capacity are exempt from the FLSA’s minimum wage and overtime pay requirements if paid a minimum salary on a “salary basis.”307 Effective January 1, 2020, the minimum salary threshold was $684.00 per week ($35,568 annually).308 On April 26, 2024, the DOL published a final rule changing the minimum salary threshold applicable to the executive, administrative, and professional exemptions (the “DOL’s 2024 Final Rule”).309 Specifically, the DOL’s 2024 Final Rule provided that effective July 1, 2024, the minimum salary increased from $684.00 per week to $844 per week ($43,888 annually).310 It we are not bound by them”); Vitali v. Reit Mgt. & Research, LLC, 88 Mass. App. Ct. 99, 103 (2015) (“in interpreting state law, [Massachusetts courts] look to how the FLSA has been construed”). 305 Some of the white collar exemptions provide for exceptions from the minimum salary level and salary basis requirements. 306 29 C.F.R. §§ 541.100, 541.200, and 541.300. 307 These requirements do not apply to outside sales employees, teachers, certain computer professionals or employees practicing law or medicine. 29 C.F.R. §§ 541.500(c), 541.303(d), 541.400(b), 541.304(d). Computer professionals may be paid either $684.00 or more per week on a salary or fee basis (or $455.00 per week for employees in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, Puerto Rico, or the U.S. Virgin Islands, or $380.00 per week for employees in American Samoa, who are not employed by the federal government) or at least $27.63 per hour. 29 C.F.R. § 541.400(b). 308 Defining and Delimiting the Exemptions for Executive, Administrative, Professional, Outside Sales and Computer Employees, 84 Fed. Reg. 51,230 (Sept. 27, 2019); 29 C.F.R. § 541.600(a). The rule did not change the duties test. See 84 Fed. Reg. 51,245. In Mayfield v. U.S. Dep’t of Labor, 117 F.4th 611 (5th Cir. 2024), the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit rejected a challenge to the salary threshold set by this rule. 309 Defining and Delimiting the Exemptions for Executive, Administrative, Professional, Outside Sales, and Computer Employees, 89 Fed. Reg. 32,842-32,973; 29 C.F.R. §§541.100, 541.200, and 541.300 (effective July 1, 2024). 310 Id., 89 Fed. Reg. at 32,851.
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