Q3 U.S. Hiring Trends Report The New Federal Overtime Rule: Who Would Be Most Affected? icims Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Q3 U.S. Hiring Trends Report Like many other things in the federal government, labor regulations are in a state of flux. Up until November 22, an estimated 4.2 million more workers were set to become eligible, on December 1, for overtime pay because of a rule change by the U.S. Department of Labor. Then a federal judge issued an injunction blocking the implementation of the rule, raising the prospect that the courts will eventually strike down the rule change. In addition, the rule faces an uncertain future in the Trump administration, in light of the president-elect s promises to reduce regulations of various kinds. With a Republican-controlled Congress, there are a variety of legislative and executive actions that could render the court rulings moot by reversing or altering the rule change. Nevertheless, many employers have already raised salaries or taken other measures in anticipation of the new rule as announced in May of this year. If the rule change survives the legal and political challenges ahead, the scope of its impact will be even more significant. This is the first time this rule has been slated to change in over a decade, and the federal government estimates that it would raise the proportion of full-time salaried workers who are eligible for overtime pay to 35 percent from just seven percent (compared to an estimated 60 percent of salaried employees back in 1975). With the debate on overtime pay and income inequality newly reopened, the need for informed analysis has only grown. The questions include not just how many people the planned rule change would impact, but who those people would be which industries they work for and what cities they live in. This report uses icims system data from across more than 1,500 hiring companies to help answer those questions, focusing on the contracts most sensitive to changes in the business environment: new hires, rather than existing employees. To gain a sense of which companies are most exposed to this regulation and how they have prepared for its implementation, we looked at the distribution of salaries of new hires in the icims system, comparing data from across the U.S. by industry, city, and company size. To simplify the analysis, we focused on just the estimated salaries a comprehensive analysis would require collecting data on bonuses, commissions, and various other exceptions and minutia in the regulations. Although our analysis focuses on changes in the relative proportions of different salary levels, employers have a variety of tools at their disposal to reduce the potential impact of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) rule change on their labor costs. Many articles have been published online about the intricacies of how to optimize a payroll strategy based on a company s individual situation. No doubt we will see more comprehensive analyses come out in the months ahead, and chances are that some of them will reveal unintended consequences from the rule change or even from its announcement and subsequent reconsideration. Already, some commentators have raised questions about the potential net effects based on prior research from the U.K. about how employers offset overtime premiums by adjusting wage levels. Clearly, this is just the beginning of a conversation that will be with us for some time to come. By laying out these basic facts on estimated salary levels among new hires, this report suggests where other analysts may begin looking for the most or least impact on and adaptation by U.S. employers. Josh Wright icims Chief Economist 2 icims Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Q3 U.S. Hiring Trends Report Table of Contents The Overtime Rule 4 Exposure to the New Rule Among Major U.S. Cities 5 The Businesses That Are Most Exposed 6 Companies That Have Been Preparing for This Change 7 Industries That Are Most Exposed to the New Overtime Rules 8 About Us 11 3 icims Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Q3 U.S. Hiring Trends Report The Overtime Rule In May, the Department of Labor announced that it would raise the salary threshold set by the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) for which workers are eligible to receive overtime pay more than doubling it from $455 a week ($23,660 a year) to $913 a week ($47,476 a year). Workers with salaries at that level or above would be exempt from the rule and therefore ineligible for overtime pay. This rule would go into effect on December 1 and would automatically update the salary threshold every three years, based on wage growth over time. This was the first increase in the overtime threshold in more than 10 years, and many businesses have of course been concerned about how it will affect their labor costs. Under the FLSA, salaried workers eligible for overtime pay receive 1.5 times their regular hourly wages for hours worked beyond 40 per week. Under the new overtime rule, employers would face a number of options. The simplest ones are: 1. Pay time-and-a-half for overtime work for newly eligible salaried workers. 2. Limit the hours of newly eligible salaried workers to 40 hours per week and hire new workers. 3. Lower newly eligible workers base salaries or convert them to an hourly pay rate that gives them the same total compensation. 4. Raise newly eligible workers salaries above the new threshold so that they are ineligible for overtime pay. This is a complex decision because it can impact not only company payrolls but also staff morale. Some workers may feel they have been demoted by being converted from salaried to hourly pay or now see a lower salary level stated even though their take-home pay remains relatively stable. Also, while limiting hours may induce some employers to increase their hiring, the fixed costs of benefits packages may prevent them from using new hires to fill all those working hours they lost. If not all the working hours are replaced, then existing employees have to work harder or see the quality of their work and their work environment deteriorate. It appears that employers are already adapting to the rule change. Within icims system data for full-time employees, we found that about 35 percent of new hires salaries would be eligible for overtime pay in line with government estimates. That 35 percent figure is an average across the entire private sector, but which types of companies would the new overtime rule most affect? The following sections present data to answer this question by comparing across industries, cities, and company sizes. 4 icims Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Q3 U.S. Hiring Trends Report Exposure to the New Rule Among Major U.S. Cities To analyze which major U.S. cities would see the most impact on their new jobs from the change in the FLSA s overtime threshold, we looked at 32 major metropolitan areas. We found that their exposure to this rule change varied widely, from around 10 percent up to around 50 percent of new hires. Figure 1: U.S. Cities Have Up to 51 Percent of Workforce Newly Eligible for Overtime Five Cities with the Highest Proportion of Positions That Would Be Newly Eligible for Overtime, as of Q3 Metropolitan Area Las Vegas-Henderson-Paradise, NV Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale, AZ Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL Salt Lake City, UT Cleveland-Elyria, OH 51.3% 50.3% 48.4% 48.0% 46.1% 48.6% 48.9% 51.4% 51.9% 52.7% The five cities with the highest proportion of salaried new hires eligible for overtime pay are cities where a lower cost of living implies lower salaries overall: Cleveland, Salt Lake City, Tampa, Phoenix, and Las Vegas. Because of their lower income levels, these cities would see the rule change affect a relatively large portion of their workforce. Figure 2: U.S. Cities With Only 10 20 Percent of Workforce Newly Eligible for Overtime Five Cities with the Lowest Proportion of Positions That Would BeNewly Eligible for Overtime, as of Q3 Metropolitan Area San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward, CA Washington-Arlington-Alexandria,DC-VA-MD-WV 10.3% 15.2% 88.8% 84.8% Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH 18.0% 81.9% Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA 18.3% 80.7% Austin-Round Rock, TX 20.5% 79.0% 5 icims Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Q3 U.S. Hiring Trends Report The five cities with the lowest proportion of salaried new hires eligible for overtime pay are cities where a higher cost of living requires higher salaries overall: San Francisco, Washington D.C., Boston, Los Angeles, and Austin. Because of their higher income levels, these cities would see the rule change affect a relatively modest portion of their workforce. Note that in this group, the range of proportions for newly eligible hires is much larger than in the other group of five cities: 10 percentage points instead of 5. This reflects the fact that there is a relatively large number of cities with moderate salary levels but only a few with very high salaries. San Francisco stands out as more tilted toward high salaries than any of the others, consistent with its notoriously high cost of living. The Businesses That Are Most Exposed Figure 3: The Larger the Business, the Higher the Proportion of Newly Eligible Workers The Salaries of Hires by Company Size, Aggregate of 2014 - Company Size Enterprise Business Large Business 34.4% 31.2% 65.0% 67.9% Medium Business Small Business 27.6% 23.3% 71.6% 74.7% Small: Less than 100 employees Medium: 100 999 employees Large: 1,000 4,999 employees Enterprise: More than 5,000 employees The largest proportion of total eligible salaries (both newly eligible and already eligible) occurs in the largest enterprise businesses, reflecting enterprise businesses reliance on many low-level workers with modest salaries. Evidently, the smaller the company size, the lower the proportion of new hires who would be newly eligible, perhaps because smaller businesses tend to be less hierarchical and tend to have less sophisticated benefits packages to offset low salaries they have to pay up in cash, so to speak. Yet the largest proportion of the very lowest salaries that are already eligible occurs in small business, so they still rely on the cheapest labor among full-time employees, even if they have a modest proportion of newly eligible workers. 6 icims Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Q3 U.S. Hiring Trends Report A survey by the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB) indicates that the new rule would affect 44 percent of small businesses. Using a definition that closely corresponds to NFIB membership, icims found that the proportion of small business recent hires who would be eligible for overtime pay is close to 30 percent. Companies That Have Been Preparing for This Change Employers were given more than six months to prepare for this rule. President Obama instructed the Department of Labor to begin working on revising the FLSA rule in 2014, and the final details were announced in May, including the fact that the final rule would become effective on December 1,. Our findings suggest that certain employers across different company sizes have started preparing for this change by decreasing the proportion of newly eligible employees. Figure 4: Larger Companies Appear to be Preparing for the New Regulations Salaries of Hires: Companies by Year, 2014 Company Size Year Enterprise Business 2014 36.3% 63.2% 37.4% 61.5% 29.7% 70.0% Large Business 2014 31.2% 67.8% 34.1% 65.1% 28.1% 71.1% Medium Business 2014 27.8% 71.5% 28.7% 70.5% 26.6% 72.8% Small Business 2014 24.8% 72.6% 24.2% 73.9% 21.3% 77.0% 7 icims Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Q3 U.S. Hiring Trends Report Larger companies appear to be most attentive in preparing for regulations: they saw the largest decrease in the proportion of lower salaries, and this shift began last year. While some of this may be due to the influence of upward wage pressure from the tightening labor market as a whole, it would be surprising if large companies did not prepare carefully for this rule change. Small businesses saw the second-largest net drop in the proportion of new hires eligible for overtime pay. This is somewhat surprising since the overtime rule provides an exemption for businesses with revenue under $500,000 (although there are exceptions even to this exemption) and since small businesses are less likely to have the expertise and the staff on hand to develop an optimal strategy for responding to the rule change. Perhaps this reflects an outsized sensitivity to macroeconomic conditions: small businesses may be struggling to compete in the tightening labor market and therefore have to pay up for new hires. Industries That Are Most Exposed to the New Overtime Rules Figure 5: Financial Activities and Retail Trade Are Among the Most Exposed Industries: Salaries of Hires, 2014 Aggregate Industry Financial Activities 46.6% 52.8% Wholesale Trade 40.2% 59.0% Retail Trade 38.2% 61.4% Transportation and Warehousing 37.1% 62.8% Education and Health Services 37.1% 61.8% Leisure and Hospitality 33.1% 66.5% Information 32.7% 65.8% Professional and Business Services 28.3% 71.6% Manufacturing 22.9% 75.5% 8 icims Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Q3 U.S. Hiring Trends Report icims found significant variation across industries, too. On average, the financial activities and retail trade industries are among the most exposed to the new overtime rule. Retail relies on many low-wage workers, and certain areas of financial activities do as well, such as sales and office administrative support occupations that tend to have lower base salaries. Transportation and warehousing falls in the middle of our distribution. Regulations restricting the working hours of truck drivers and others may limit these employers flexibility in responding to the FLSA rule change. Manufacturing and professional and business services are among the least exposed categories, since they rely on a relatively larger proportion of highly skilled workers. How has this changed over time? Which industries have been preparing more proactively for this regulation by adjusting salary levels? Certain industries exposure to the new rule has declined each of the last two years, including: financial activities, manufacturing, leisure & hospitality. Retail trade and professional & business services have seen a net decrease in newly eligible salaries, but only in. Education services & healthcare and transportation & warehousing have actually seen their proportions of newly eligible salaries increase over the last two years. Additionally, there has been very little change in the information and wholesale trade industries from 2014 to. 9 icims Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Q3 U.S. Hiring Trends Report Figure 6: Some Industries Exposure Has Declined Over the Last Two Years Salaries of Hires: Industries by Year, 2014 Industry Year Education and Health Services 2014 31.6% 67.5% 43.6% 54.9% 34.3% 64.7% Financial Activities 2014 49.9% 46.7% 43.4% 49.1% 52.7% 56.3% Information 2014 31.5% 33.7% 32.6% 68.0% 63.3% 66.5% Leisure and Hospitality 2014 36.7% 33.8% 31.0% 63.0% 65.9% 68.5% Manufacturing 2014 25.8% 23.8% 19.8% 72.3% 75.0% 78.6% Professional and Business Services 2014 27.8% 30.7% 26.2% 72.1% 69.2% 73.7% Retail Trade 2014 Transportation and Warehousing 2014 Wholesale Trade 2014 39.9% 41.3% 33.4% 28.0% 37.5% 44.6% 40.7% 40.2% 39.3% 59.5% 58.1% 66.5% 71.9% 62.5% 55.4% 58.8% 58.7% 59.8% 10 icims Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Q3 U.S. Hiring Trends Report About Us About icims System Data This report presents data from January 2014 through September in a sample of more than 1,500 employers drawn from icims customer base of more than 3,200 contracted customers. The data is generated by user interactions with icims software, which processes over 1.25 million jobs a year and over 35 million applications, with broad geographic and industry representation across the U.S. The salary estimates for this report are derived from salary offer ranges for full-time positions that were provided by users of icims software. A team of icims engineers and data scientists extracted and cleaned the data, applying a variety of filters and then aggregating it to protect the privacy of icims clients and their job candidates. The list of 32 cities comes from the 20 cities included in the S&P/Case-Shiller home price index and another 12 cities with hiring activity between the levels of the most active and the least active of the Case-Shiller cities. Employers are assigned to industries under the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS). In assigning job postings to individual cities, icims analyzes entries at the level of ZIP codes and then aggregates them into Core Based Statistical Areas (CBSAs), as defined by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget. CBSAs are districts defined to represent meaningful socio-economic units rather than political ones, and therefore do not always match municipal and state boundaries. About icims Hiring Insights icims Hiring Insights is a research house that focuses on labor market insights and recruitment trends. Our team of researchers and writers use icims exclusive data, proprietary, and secondary research to develop reports and articles that cover the most recent developments in the workforce. Led by icims Chief Economist Josh Wright, icims Hiring Insights helps its readers stay well-informed on the latest recruitment, economic, and technology advancements. To learn more visit: www.icims.com/hiring-insights About icims Chief Economist: Josh Wright is Chief Economist at icims and oversees the organization s proprietary research. Prior to joining icims, Josh served as a U.S. economist with Bloomberg L.P., where he analyzed current macroeconomic trends and was a frequent guest contributor on Bloomberg Radio and Bloomberg TV. As Chief Economist at icims, Josh is responsible for analyzing proprietary data in order to produce fresh insights on emerging trends in the U.S. labor market. He contributes to the publishing of quarterly trends reports, as well as semiannual reports and blog posts on ad hoc labor topics. In addition, Josh supports in the development of software that allows clients to analyze their own performance relative to industry benchmarks by collaborating with data scientists, software developers, and marketing executives. A former Federal Reserve staffer, Josh helped build the Fed s mortgage-backed securities (MBS) portfolio of more than $1 trillion, among other responses to the global financial crisis. As a researcher, he has published on labor and housing markets, as well as U.S. monetary policy, and advised policymakers across the legislative and executive branches of government. 11 icims Inc. All Rights Reserved.