A public hearing was held in Trenton, New Jersey on April 15, 2011 regarding a proposal to amend N.J.A.C. 12:56-6.1 and 12:56-7 with regard to exemptions from overtime compensation for executive, administrative, professional, and outside sales employees. The New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development specifically wants to repeal its existing regulations for these exemptions and adopt the language of the federal counterparts instead. While the goal is to eliminate any inconsistencies between the state and federal regulations, the effect will be to lessen the burden on New Jersey employers hoping to justify denying overtime compensation to certain employees.

New Jersey’s current regulations, much like the federal ones, provide overtime exemptions for an individual employed in a bona fide administrative, executive, professional or outside sales capacity. However, significant differences have existed between the NJ state law and federal law since the U.S. Department of Labor overhauled the Federal overtime exemption regulations on August 23, 2004.  First, New Jersey requires an employee to dedicate at least 80 percent of his or her workweek to the performance of exempt tasks (i.e., management tasks, office or non-manual work related to management or general business operations, etc) to qualify for the overtime exemption. There's a small exception for retail and service establishments, where the requirement is at least 60 percent exempt tasks. N.J.A.C. 12:56-7.1(a)(5) (executive); 12:56-7.2(a)(4) (administrative); 12:56-7.3(a)(4) (professional); 12:56-7.4(a)(2) (outside sales).  The federal exemptions, on the other hand, do not contain any express limitation on the percentage of time an employee may dedicate to the performance of exempt or non-exempt tasks to be eligible for an exemption. (click on link to read full story)