Administrative Exemption

To qualify for the administrative employee exemption, all of the following tests must be met:

• You must be compensated on a salary or fee basis (as defined in the regulations) at a rate not less than $455 per week;
• Your primary duty must be the performance of office or non-manual work directly related to the management or general business operations of the employer or the employer’s customers; and
• Your primary duty must include the exercise of discretion and independent judgment with respect to matters of significance

Exempt administrative work is limited to support or “staff” jobs, as distinguished from “production” or “operations” or “line” jobs. Administrative employees are engaged in work related to company policy or the general operations of the employer, as distinguished from work related to “producing” what the employer “sells.” For example, employees involved in preparing a company’s payroll are performing administrative work (but not necessarily exempt work), while employees involved in manufacturing products sold to customers are not.

To be exempt, the work must be at a relatively high-level, involve a good deal of judgment and discretion, and be important to the overall operation of the enterprise. Merely clerical work may be administrative, but it is not exempt. Most secretaries, for example, may accurately be said to be performing administrative work, but their jobs are not usually exempt. Similarly, filing, filling out forms and preparing routine reports, answering telephones, making travel arrangements, working on customer “help desks,” and similar jobs are not likely to be high-level enough to be administratively exempt. Routinely ordering supplies (and even selecting which vendor to buy paper clips from) is not likely to be considered high-level enough to qualify the employee for administratively exempt status.

If you feel that you have been misclassified as an exempt administrative employee and would like to discuss the matter with an attorney, please contact us or fill out our questionnaire and we will call you.