Wages and overtime under the FLSA: what the statute lays out
This guide describes federal wage-and-hour law as laid out in the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA), 29 U.S.C. §§ 201–219, and how the Supreme Court has read its key sections. It explains what the statute says; it is not legal advice. Every section and case discussed here links to the full text hosted in this library.
Informational only — not legal advice. This page describes statutes and court opinions; it does not apply them to any situation. Verify every section against the official United States Code ↗. Texas also has a state wage-payment statute — the Texas Payday Law, Labor Code chapter 61 — which this library does not currently host; its official text is at statutes.capitol.texas.gov ↗.
The governing law at a glance
| Section | What it covers |
|---|---|
| § 201 — Short title | "This chapter may be cited as the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938" |
| § 202 — Congressional finding and declaration of policy | Why the Act exists: labor conditions "detrimental to the maintenance of the minimum standard of living" |
| § 203 — Definitions | "Employer," "employee," "employ" — including the famously broad "suffer or permit to work" — and terms like § 203(o) "changing clothes" |
| § 206 — Minimum wage | The wage floor for each workweek for covered employees |
| § 207 — Maximum hours | The forty-hour workweek and the one-and-one-half-times "regular rate" overtime requirement |
| § 211 — Collection of data | Department of Labor investigations; § 211(c): every employer "shall make, keep, and preserve" wage and hour records |
| § 213 — Exemptions | The employees §§ 206 and 207 do not cover — executive, administrative, professional, outside-sales, and a long list of others |
| § 216 — Penalties | Criminal penalties; § 216(b): the private action for unpaid wages, liquidated damages, fees, and "similarly situated" collective actions |
| § 218 — Relation to other laws | Federal floor, not ceiling: stricter state standards are not displaced |
| § 260 — Liquidated damages | The court's discretion to reduce liquidated damages on the employer's good-faith showing |
The Portal-to-Portal Act provisions on preliminary and postliminary activities and the limitations period (29 U.S.C. §§ 254–255) are not hosted in this library; their official text is at uscode.house.gov ↗. Section 254 nonetheless matters below, because Alvarez construed it.
The process, step by step
Text version of this diagram
- Employment covered by the Act — § 203
- Employer makes and keeps wage and hour records — § 211(c)
- Minimum wage owed for hours worked — § 206(a)
- Time-and-a-half over forty hours in a workweek — § 207(a)(1)
- Unless an exemption applies — § 213
- Recovery: unpaid wages plus liquidated damages, individually or collectively — § 216(b)
- Court discretion over liquidated damages on a good-faith showing — § 260
1. Coverage. The Act attaches through § 203's definitions: an "employee" is "any individual employed by an employer," and "employ" "includes to suffer or permit to work" — language courts have long described as exceptionally broad. Coverage also runs through commerce: §§ 206(a) and 207(a) apply to employees "engaged in commerce or in the production of goods for commerce," or employed in an enterprise so engaged.
2. Records. § 211(c) places the recordkeeping duty on the employer: every covered employer "shall make, keep, and preserve such records … of the wages, hours, and other conditions and practices of employment" as the Department of Labor prescribes. The statute assigns the duty to one side of the relationship — a structural fact that shapes how wage disputes are litigated when records are missing.
3. The wage floor. § 206(a) requires every covered employer to pay each employee, "in any workweek," wages at not less than the statutory rates. The workweek is the Act's unit of account throughout.
4. Overtime. § 207(a)(1) provides that no employer shall employ a covered employee "for a workweek longer than forty hours" unless overtime hours are compensated "at a rate not less than one and one-half times the regular rate at which he is employed." What counts as hours worked — the boundary of the compensable workday — is where Alvarez and Sandifer, below, operate.
5. Exemptions. § 213(a)(1) withdraws §§ 206 and 207 from "any employee employed in a bona fide executive, administrative, or professional capacity … or in the capacity of outside salesman," with those terms "defined and delimited" by Department of Labor regulations — the regulatory hook on which Christopher and Auer turn. Section 213 then continues through a long enumeration of occupation-specific exemptions.
6. Recovery. § 216(b) makes an employer who violates § 206 or § 207 "liable to the employee or employees affected in the amount of their unpaid minimum wages, or their unpaid overtime compensation … and in an additional equal amount as liquidated damages," plus fees and costs in a successful action. The same subsection authorizes suit "on behalf of … other employees similarly situated" — the FLSA collective action at issue in Genesis. Under § 260, a court "may, in its sound discretion" reduce or deny liquidated damages if the employer shows the violation was in good faith and on reasonable grounds. The limitations period is set by 29 U.S.C. § 255 (not hosted; official text ↗ above).
The key sections, closely read
**§ 207 — overtime.* Three textual choices carry the weight. The unit: liability is computed by the "workweek," not the day or the pay period. The trigger: the forty-first hour — the statute does not limit hours; it prices them. The rate: "one and one-half times the regular rate at which he is employed" — the "regular rate" is itself a defined, litigated quantity (§ 207(e) enumerates what it includes and excludes). What § 207 does not* define is when working time starts and stops; that boundary comes from § 203's definitions, the Portal-to-Portal Act, and the case law below.
**§ 216(b) — the action.* The subsection does three jobs: it fixes the measure* (unpaid wages doubled by an "additional equal amount" of liquidated damages — a sum § 260 lets a court trim only on the employer's good-faith showing); it adds fees and costs for a successful action; and it creates the collective mechanism, allowing one employee to sue for others "similarly situated" who opt in — a structure the Court in Genesis contrasted with class actions.
How the courts have read it
The opinions below are hosted in this library in full; each links to its authoritative source from its own page.
IBP, Inc. v. Alvarez, 546 U.S. 21 (2005)
- Issue — Whether time meat-processing and poultry workers spent walking between the locker
room and the production floor, and waiting, after donning required protective gear, counts as compensable working time notwithstanding the Portal-to-Portal Act's exclusion of "preliminary" and "postliminary" activities.
- Holding — The Court held, unanimously, "that any activity that is 'integral and
indispensable' to a 'principal activity' is itself a 'principal activity'" — so walking time after the first principal activity of the day (donning the gear) falls within the "continuous workday" and is compensable, while time spent merely waiting to don is not.
meaning of "employ"); Portal-to-Portal Act § 4, 29 U.S.C. § 254 (not hosted; official text ↗).
- Connects — Draws the outer boundary of the compensable day that every § 207 computation
presupposes. Sandifer later fixed a related boundary — what "changing clothes" means under § 203(o) when a collective-bargaining agreement excludes it.
- Read it — Full opinion in this library.
Christopher v. SmithKline Beecham Corp., 567 U.S. 142 (2012)
- Issue — Whether pharmaceutical sales representatives — whose primary duty is obtaining
nonbinding commitments from physicians to prescribe their employer's drugs — are "outside salesm[e]n" under § 213(a)(1) and the Department of Labor's regulations, and so exempt from § 207 overtime.
- Holding — The Court concluded "that these employees qualify as 'outside salesm[e]n,'" and
declined to defer to the Department's contrary interpretation, first advanced in litigation, reasoning that deference was unwarranted where it would create "unfair surprise" for a long-standing industry practice.
- Turns on — § 213(a)(1) (the exemption and its delegation to regulations);
§§ 206–207 (the requirements the exemption withdraws).
- Connects — The modern anchor for reading § 213's delegated definitions. Auer v. Robbins,
519 U.S. 452 (1997), upheld the Secretary's "salary-basis" test for the same exemption and framed the deference question Christopher later qualified.
- Read it — Full opinion in this library.
Genesis Healthcare Corp. v. Symczyk, 569 U.S. 66 (2013)
- Issue — A nurse sued under § 216(b) on behalf of herself and "other employees
similarly situated"; her individual claim was assumed to have become moot after an unaccepted offer of complete relief. The question was whether the collective action remained justiciable.
- Holding — The Court held "that it is not justiciable": with the lone plaintiff's individual
claim moot and no other employees having opted in, the suit ended. The Court distinguished § 216(b) collective actions from class actions, emphasizing that conditional certification creates no independent legal status for the collective.
- Turns on — § 216(b) (the "similarly situated" collective-action mechanism and its
opt-in structure).
- Connects — Where Alvarez and Christopher define what is owed and to whom, Genesis
defines how the § 216(b) vehicle itself behaves — the procedural half of the recovery section the flow diagram ends on.
- Read it — Full opinion in this library.
Evidence and elements
Text version of this diagram
| From | To |
|---|---|
| Timesheets and punch-clock records | Hours 'worked': the workweek and the workday |
| Timesheets and punch-clock records | Employer's duty to make, keep, and preserve records |
| Pay stubs and payroll records | Employer's duty to make, keep, and preserve records |
| Pay stubs and payroll records | Recovery and 'similarly situated' collective actions |
| Job descriptions and actual day-to-day duties | Exempt capacity: the duties and salary tests |
| The employment agreement and salary records | An employment relationship the Act covers |
| The employment agreement and salary records | Exempt capacity: the duties and salary tests |
| Hours 'worked': the workweek and the workday | IBP, Inc. v. Alvarez (U.S. 2005) |
| Hours 'worked': the workweek and the workday | Sandifer v. U.S. Steel Corp. (U.S. 2014) |
| Exempt capacity: the duties and salary tests | Christopher v. SmithKline Beecham Corp. (U.S. 2012) |
| Exempt capacity: the duties and salary tests | Auer v. Robbins (U.S. 1997) |
| Recovery and 'similarly situated' collective actions | Genesis Healthcare Corp. v. Symczyk (U.S. 2013) |
The map above pairs each statutory element with the kinds of records the courts in the linked cases discussed — time records against the hours-worked boundary the Court drew in Alvarez and Sandifer v. U.S. Steel Corp., 571 U.S. 220 (2014) (where "changing clothes" under § 203(o) was given its ordinary meaning); payroll records against the employer's § 211(c) duty to "make, keep, and preserve" them; actual duties and salary arrangements against the § 213(a)(1) tests examined in Christopher and Auer; and pay records against the § 216(b) measure of recovery at issue in Genesis. Retaliation for complaining has its own provision — § 215(a)(3), not hosted here (official text ↗) — which the Court in Kasten v. Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics Corp., 563 U.S. 1 (2011) held covers oral as well as written complaints. The map describes what those opinions examined; it is not a checklist for any particular situation.
Where to verify
- Official statute text: the FLSA at uscode.house.gov ↗ (Title
29, chapter 8), including §§ 254–255 and § 215, which this library does not host.
- Texas state law: the Texas Payday Law, Labor Code chapter 61, at
statutes.capitol.texas.gov ↗ — not hosted in this library.
- In this library: the FLSA sections in Title 29, chapter 8.
- Every case page above carries its own hand-off link to the authoritative source of the opinion.