Do you work overtime, but no one ever gives you time and a half?

I invite you to listen up.

I'm David Brancaccio.

It is not a done deal yet, but the Biden administration is pushing to make many more people eligible

for special overtime pay if they work long days or long weeks.

The idea is to require companies to pay overtime for most people who earn less than $55,000 a year.

The threshold has been $35,600 a year.

Marketplace is just in hoe reports.

The types of workers who become eligible for overtime are mostly low to middle income

workers, often in supervisory roles, says Peter Erasm, an economics professor at Iowa

State University.

That usually ends up being, say, lower level supervisors in manufacturing, but also fast

food or hospitality industries writ broad.

Erasm says those are exactly the same people who've been working long hours during the

pandemic, one because they've had to cover for the open positions employers haven't filled

and two because many of those salary workers currently aren't eligible for overtime.

And so there's an incentive for firms to perhaps overuse their salary to employees because

it's less expensive.

If more workers qualified for overtime, some employers might reduce worker hours.

That also could mean that new additional workers are hired to make up those hours, so we might

see an increase in employment.

Dean of Cornell School of Industrial and Labor Relations, he says businesses might

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