Am I Owed California IT Overtime?

June 5th, 2009. By admin

For those of you in California who work in IT or computer industry, it might be a bit confusing to figure out if you qualify for overtime pay. After all, just being labelled “Exempt” doesn’t necessarily mean much–you could be labelled such and yet still qualify for overtime pay based on a number of “tests”.

LawyersandSettlements.com outlines some of these tests for you, but here’s something you may not be aware of: you may be entitled to back overtime pay–going up to FOUR YEARS back. So even if you’re legitimately Exempt now, you may not have been a couple of years ago.

One of the requirements in determining Exempt status is your level of pay. The chart below shows the minimum pay requirements (2005-2009) that you needed to be at in order to be considered Exempt. While there are other factors that must be looked at to determine if a job is indeed Exempt, your rate of pay is a good place to start. 

Year	Hourly Rate	Annual Rate (40 hour week)
2009	$37.94	$79,050
2008 as of Sept.	$36.00	$75,000
2008 prior to Sept.	$36.00	$74,880
2007	$49.77	$103,522
2006	$47.81	$99,445
2005	$45.84	$95,348

Source: Division of Labor Standards Enforcement; History of Rate of Pay for Exemption for Computer Software Employee (California Labor Code Section 515.5(a)(3))

Tags: California IT overtime, California labor law

This was posted on Friday, June 5th, 2009 at 9:21 am and is filed under Emerging Issues . Feel free to respond, or trackback. Read our comments policy.