You have an employee working full-time, doing exempt work, making $500 a week. If his hours and salary are cut in half but his duties stay the same, he’s still exempt, right? Wrong. Here’s why:

As the Department of Labor (DOL) mentioned in a recent opinion letter, part-time workers have to pass the same salary test for exemption as full-time employees. That means they have to make at least $455 a week, no matter how much they work. There’s no provision in the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) to let companies prorate that amount to fit a work week that’s less than 40 hours.

Take this scenario the DOL describes: An employee works full-time making $30,000 a year. Then, that employee starts working just 20 hours a week, and gets paid $15,000 (or, roughly $288/week). That puts him or her below $455 a week, so the employee is no longer exempt. (Of course, if the new part-time salary was still high enough, he or she would stay exempt.)

Note: The opinion letter also points out that employers are allowed to pay part-timers on a salary basis, as long as they make sure the weekly salary divided by the actual number of hours worked comes out to at least the minimum wage.

Read the letter here.

Tags: Department of Labor, DOL, exempt, part time, salary test