Senate Bill Would Double Overtime Pay Rate Under FLSA Amendment
If enacted, the Double the Wage for Overtime Act would represent the most significant change to overtime compensation rules under the Fair Labor Standards Act since the law's 1938 passage, with...
Lawmakers have introduced the Double the Wage for Overtime Act, a federal bill that would amend the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) of 1938 to raise the overtime pay rate from the current 1.5 times a worker's regular rate to 2.0 times that rate for all hours worked beyond 40 in a workweek, according to reporting by the New York Post dated August 6, 2026. The bill's full text, sponsor list, and chamber of origin had not been published in the Congressional Record as of this writing; those details would be confirmed upon official filing in the Senate legislative database at congress.gov.
The FLSA, codified at 29 U.S.C. § 207, has governed overtime eligibility and calculation since its enactment under President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The statute currently mandates that covered, non-exempt employees receive no less than one and one-half times their regular rate for hours exceeding 40 per workweek. The proposed legislation, if enacted, would require employers to pay two dollars for every dollar of a worker's regular hourly rate beyond that threshold — an increase of 33 percent above the existing overtime floor.
The Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in its May 2025 Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey that approximately 82.3 million workers in the United States are paid hourly wages. The share of those workers who regularly log overtime hours, and who would therefore be directly affected by the proposed rate change, is not specified in available public data; the Bureau of Labor Statistics Current Employment Statistics program tracks aggregate overtime hours by industry sector but does not publish individual worker eligibility breakdowns.
The bill's fiscal and labor-market effects have not yet been scored by the Congressional Budget Office, which would be the authoritative source for projected impacts on federal contractors, payroll costs, and employment levels. The CBO score, if and when released, would be publicly available at cbo.gov. Business groups including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have historically opposed FLSA rate increases on grounds of compliance cost, while labor organizations such as the AFL-CIO have advocated for expanded overtime protections; neither organization had issued a formal statement on this specific bill as of publication.
What remains unknown: the bill's official number, its full list of co-sponsors, whether it has a companion measure in the House, and whether any committee markup has been scheduled. The official Senate bill text and sponsor record, once filed, would be accessible through the congress.gov legislative database under the Labor and Employment subject classification.