The overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) of 1938 have been spectacularly successful and enormously popular. The federal overtime law contains no prohibition against overtime work, unlike overtime statutes in many other countries. The goal of the FLSA’s overtime provision is to:

• Compensate workers for overtime work with a wage premium.
• Discourage workers from demanding excessive work hours.
• Encourage employers to hire additional staff rather than overworking their existing staff.

The FLSA’s overtime provisions have discouraged excessive work hours: Workers in jobs not covered by the FLSA (such as domestic workers and agricultural workers) are twice as likely to work more than 40 hours in a week. Yet despite this effectiveness, Americans still work more hours than in almost any other industrialized country. To make matters worse, fewer and fewer workers are qualifying for overtime protection.  Given the effectiveness of the FLSA, overtime protection should be extended to more workers, rather than denying overtime protection to more workers.  For example, federal overtime protections should be indexed to restore overtime protection that is lost every year to inflation.  Also, states should use their discretion to enact stronger wage and hour protections than those contained in the federal rules.