Over the last several months, the United States Department of Labor (“DOL”) has been quite active in pursuing rulemaking efforts to address regulations that had been changed or rescinded during the Biden Administration. Specifically, the DOL has published proposed rules on the classification of independent contractors and determining joint employment. It also recently put out a technical amendment to the regulations on White-Collar Exemptions related to the salary threshold used to determine applicability of the exemptions. Although each effort is different in its focus and effect, each impacts an employer’s obligations to workers under the Fair Labor Standards Act; thus, understanding each is essential in effectively ensuring compliance.

In 2024, the DOL promulgated a final rule expanding the factors considered in determining the status of a worker as an employee or an independent contractor that had been narrowed during the first Trump administration. In essence, the DOL returned to a totality of the circumstances approach based on a six-factor test that made it more likely a worker would be viewed as an employee versus an independent contractor. But, on February 26, 2026, the DOL changed its approach again by proposing a rule that it asserts will “make it easier to properly differentiate between employees with the protections under the Fair Labor Standards Act and those workers who work as independent contractors.”

Specifically, the DOL published a proposed rule that...

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