“The overtime provisions in Project 2025 comprise a profoundly anti-overtime agenda that will mean millions will be working more for less.”
See the impact by state and demographics
U.S. law requires that most workers receive overtime pay when they work more than 40 hours in a week. This is a fundamental employment standard that helps ensure workers are compensated fairly when they are asked to work long hours.
Donald Trump has a proven anti-overtime record. When he was president, he stripped overtime protections from millions of workers by refusing to defend the Obama-era overtime rule from a court decision that hinged on fundamentally flawed logic. He instead directed the Department of Labor to publish an extremely weak rule.
Project 2025, which provides a roadmap for what Trump is likely to do if he becomes president, has multiple provisions that would strip overtime protections from workers. We conservatively estimate that just two of these proposals would strip overtime protections from 8 million workers:
- Project 2025 calls for the extremely weak Trump-era overtime threshold to be reinstated, which would mean stripping away overtime from millions who are set to receive new overtime protections under the Biden-era overtime rule (p. 592).
- Project 2025 calls on Congress to allow employers to calculate overtime over a two- or four-week period, instead of a one-week period (p. 592). Instead of workers getting overtime when they work more than 40 hours in a week, they would only get overtime if they work more than 80 hours in two weeks, or 160 hours in four weeks. This would eliminate overtime pay for millions. Consider someone who works 50 hours one week and 30 hours the following week. Currently, they would receive overtime for the 10 extra hours they worked in the first week, but they would receive no overtime under the Project 2025 proposal.
The tables below show a breakdown by demographic and by state of those who would lose overtime protections under these two provisions. The methodology for these estimates is provided below.
The other overtime provisions in Project 2025 are nearly as bad. Here are some examples:
- Project 2025 calls for the passage of the “Working Families Flexibility Act,” which—despite being touted as being a boon to worker flexibility—does not provide any new benefits to workers, but instead provides employers new flexibility to avoid paying overtime (p. 587).
- Project 2025 urges Congress to amend labor law so that fundamental employment laws and regulations, like overtime, are negotiable in collective bargaining (p. 603). This turns national employment standards into bargaining chips for employers, giving them much greater power. For example, in bargaining, an employer could say they agree to a union demand around predictable scheduling only if the union agrees to not have overtime kick in until 45 or 50 hours a week.
- Project 2025 calls on Congress to deny teleworkers overtime pay unless they work 10 hours on a specific day (p. 589). For example, an overtime-eligible teleworker who works nine hours a day for five days would be stripped of five hours of overtime pay.
The bottom line is that none of these provisions provides new rights for workers, but each one provides new avenues to employers to avoid paying overtime. Taken together, these provisions in Project 2025 comprise a profoundly anti-overtime agenda that will mean millions will be working more for less.
The tables below show the minimum number of workers stripped of overtime protections under Project 2025 proposals, broken down by various demographics and by state.
By gender
| Female | 3,701,000 |
| Male | 4,278,000 |
| Total | 7,979,000 |
By race/ethnicity
| Black | 958,000 |
| Hispanic | 1,301,000 |
| Asian | 526,000 |
| Other | 85,000 |
| Total workers of color | 2,870,000 |
| White non-Hispanic | 5,110,000 |
By age
| 16–24 | 698,000 |
| 25–34 | 2,292,000 |
| 35–44 | 1,762,000 |
| 45–54 | 1,625,000 |
| 55+ | 1,602,000 |
By education
| High school or less | 2,404,000 |
| Some college | 2,407,000 |
| College | 2,325,000 |
| Advanced | 843,000 |
By parental status
| Father | 2,091,000 |
| Mother | 1,845,000 |
| Total custodial parent of child under 18 | 3,936,000 |
| Not a custodial parent of child under 18 | 4,044,000 |
By state
| Alabama | 105,000 |
| Alaska | 15,000 |
| Arizona | 208,000 |
| Arkansas | 70,000 |
| California | 753,000 |
| Colorado | 157,000 |
| Connecticut | 80,000 |
| Delaware | 27,000 |
| District of Columbia | 13,000 |
| Florida | 446,000 |
| Georgia | 208,000 |
| Hawaii | 27,000 |
| Idaho | 53,000 |
| Illinois | 331,000 |
| Indiana | 205,000 |
| Iowa | 104,000 |
| Kansas | 92,000 |
| Kentucky | 103,000 |
| Louisiana | 86,000 |
| Maine | 37,000 |
| Maryland | 122,000 |
| Massachusetts | 179,000 |
| Michigan | 274,000 |
| Minnesota | 155,000 |
| Mississippi | 53,000 |
| Missouri | 203,000 |
| Montana | 29,000 |
| Nebraska | 67,000 |
| Nevada | 72,000 |
| New Hampshire | 39,000 |
| New Jersey | 197,000 |
| New Mexico | 46,000 |
| New York | 388,000 |
| North Carolina | 227,000 |
| North Dakota | 25,000 |
| Ohio | 361,000 |
| Oklahoma | 105,000 |
| Oregon | 109,000 |
| Pennsylvania | 364,000 |
| Rhode Island | 27,000 |
| South Carolina | 127,000 |
| South Dakota | 29,000 |
| Tennessee | 178,000 |
| Texas | 723,000 |
| Utah | 97,000 |
| Vermont | 17,000 |
| Virginia | 186,000 |
| Washington | 196,000 |
| West Virginia | 47,000 |
| Wisconsin | 200,000 |
| Wyoming | 15,000 |
Notes: Subtotals may not add up to totals due to rounding. The values in the “parental status” section are all proportionately inflated to account for the fact that information on parental status is missing for a nontrivial share of observations.
Source: EPI analysis of pooled Current Population Survey Outgoing Rotation Group microdata, 2020–2022, following the methodology used in the U.S. Department of Labor’s 2024 rule, “Defining and Delimiting the Exemptions for Executive, Administrative, Professional, Outside Sales and Computer Employees,” 29 CFR Part 541 (published April 26, 2024).
Methodology Addendum
We used EPI extracts of Census Current Population Survey Outgoing Rotation Group (ORG) data for these calculations. The 8 million workers who would have their overtime protections stripped away under the first two Project 2025 provisions mentioned above come from two groups:
- The first group is comprised of those workers who would have their protections stripped away if the Biden-era overtime rule is replaced by a Trump-era threshold. The first, small step of the Biden-era overtime rule went into effect in July, so we conservatively assume it will remain in effect and only the second, larger step would be struck down. Following the methodology that DOL uses in the economic impact analysis of the final overtime rule, we find that 3.3 million workers will have overtime protections stripped away if that second step of the Biden-era overtime rule is struck down.
- The second group is comprised of those workers who would have their protections stripped away if employers are allowed to calculate overtime over a two- or four-week period, instead of a one-week period. We conservatively assume that only those who occasionally work overtime, not those who work overtime regularly, will lose overtime pay under this proposal, with the logic being that those who only occasionally work overtime are those for whom it will be easiest for employers to shift hours around over a two- or four-week period to avoid paying overtime. Using the same general approach DOL uses in the economic impact analysis of the final overtime rule, we find that 4.7 million workers—including blue-collar and hourly workers—are eligible for overtime but only occasionally work overtime and will as a result be likely to have their overtime stripped away if employers are allowed to calculate overtime over a two- or four-week period. Note: we exclude workers from the first group in this calculation in order to assure that the two groups are nonoverlapping.