
Executive Summary: The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) issued two Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) opinion letters on January 7, 2020, addressing questions regarding overtime calculation for nondiscretionary lump sum bonuses and per-project payments under the salary basis test. In the first opinion letter, the DOL ultimately stated that the appropriate method for calculating overtime pay on nondiscretionary lump sum bonus earnings that cannot be identified with particular workweeks is allocating the bonus equally to each workweek. In the second opinion letter, the DOL concluded that a “per-project” payment may satisfy the salary basis test, even in situations where the employee is earning “extra compensation” working on additional projects. Continue reading