What you owe, in the order it comes up

Six questions decide what a person on a payroll is legally owed, and they only work in this order. Most of the money lost in wage claims is lost at step one, by employers who got steps two through six right for someone they had classified wrongly in the first place.

1 of 6 steps written. 0 of 51 states checked. Empty slots are shown with the angle they will be written from — they are the plan, not an omission.

1. 1 Is this job exempt from overtime at all?

   For the white collar exemptions, three tests generally run together: how the pay is delivered, how much it is, and what the person actually does all day. Some occupations are excused from the two money tests entirely. A salary on its own settles nothing, and the duties test is the one that fails in court.

   • Exempt vs Non-Exempt: Three Tests, and Salary Is the Easy Two Verified 08/07/2026

2. 2 What is the floor where they work?

   Federal, state and city floors stack, and the highest one wins. A city ordinance can sit ten dollars above the state figure that every national article quotes.

   Not written yet — A state board that says which floor applies, plus the cities that overrule their own state.

3. 3 What happens past forty hours?

   Weekly in most places, daily in a few. And the premium is not calculated on the base rate — non-discretionary bonuses fold back into it, which is where the arithmetic quietly goes wrong.

   Not written yet — The regular-rate calculation with a bonus in it, and the states that count a day rather than a week.

4. 4 What leave do they accrue, and who pays for it?

   State sick leave, state family leave and federal FMLA are three different schemes with three different coverage tests, and an employer can be inside one and outside the others.

   Not written yet — Which of the three a given employer is actually in, and the paperwork each one demands.

5. 5 Does the job ad have to carry a salary range?

   A growing list of states says yes, and some of them say a range with no ceiling is not a range. The duty attaches to the posting, so it is broken before anyone is hired.

   Not written yet — Where it applies, what counts as a range, and what has to be told to an existing employee who asks.

6. 6 What does it cost to be wrong?

   Back pay is the floor, not the bill. Liquidated damages can double it, state penalties stack on top, and the clock usually runs two or three years back — not from the day somebody complains.

   Not written yet — The arithmetic of a real claim, and the record that decides it when memories disagree.

Step two has fifty-one answers

The floor is set by whichever of federal, state and city law is highest where the work happens, and most of the state figures change on 1 January. This board carries the date each one was last checked against the state's own labor department, and says so when nothing has been checked.

Every figure here is what the state's own labor department, or the text of the statute, said on the date shown — not what a payroll vendor's blog repeated. Where a state's own pages contradict each other, the article says so rather than picking the convenient one. The method is on How we check.

This is a record of what the published rules say and when they were read. It is not legal advice, and it cannot know the facts of your workplace.