FLSA overtime exemption duties tests by category (29 CFR Part 541)
Whether a salaried employee is exempt from federal overtime pay turns on two independent tests under 29 CFR Part 541 — a salary-level test and a duties test — and the duties test is a different, itemized checklist for each exemption category. Compliance blogs widely publish the salary number ($684/week, $107,432/year HCE) but not the itemized duties criteria for each category quoted directly from the regulation in one place. Each record is one exemption category — executive, administrative, learned professional, creative professional, teaching professional, practice of law or medicine, computer employee, outside sales, highly compensated employee — carrying its own general-rule duties test quoted from its section of 29 CFR 541, plus the salary or compensation basis that applies to it (including the lower territorial rates, the computer-employee hourly alternative, and the three categories that have no salary test at all). Answers 'does a salaried manager automatically qualify for the executive exemption', 'what is the duties test for the administrative exemption', 'can a computer employee be paid hourly and still be exempt', 'does a teacher or a doctor have to meet the salary threshold', 'what salary level applies in Puerto Rico or American Samoa'.
The data
| Exemption category | CFR section | Duties test | Salary or compensation requirement | How it must be paid | CFR citation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Administrative | § 541.200 | (2) Whose primary duty is 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 (3) Whose primary duty includes the exercise of discretion and independent judgment with respect to matters of significance. | $684 per week (or $455 per week if employed in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, Puerto Rico, or the U.S. Virgin Islands by employers other than the Federal government, or $380 per week if employed in American Samoa by employers other than the Federal government), exclusive of board, lodging or other facilities | Compensated on a salary or fee basis | 29 CFR Part 541 |
| Computer employee | § 541.400 | the exemptions apply only to computer employees whose primary duty consists of: (1) The application of systems analysis techniques and procedures, including consulting with users, to determine hardware, software or system functional specifications; (2) The design, development, documentation, analysis, creation, testing or modification of computer systems or programs, including prototypes, based on and related to user or system design specifications; (3) The design, documentation, testing, creation or modification of computer programs related to machine operating systems; or (4) A combination of the aforementioned duties, the performance of which requires the same level of skills. | compensated on a salary or fee basis at a rate of not less than $684 per week (or $455 per week if employed in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, Puerto Rico, or the U.S. Virgin Islands by employers other than the Federal government, or $380 per week if employed in American Samoa by employers other than the Federal government), exclusive of board, lodging, or other facilities. The section 13(a)(17) exemption applies to any computer employee compensated on an hourly basis at a rate of not less than $27.63 an hour. | The section 13(a)(17) exemption applies to any computer employee compensated on an hourly basis at a rate of not less than $27.63 an hour. | 29 CFR Part 541 |
| Creative professional | § 541.302 | To qualify for the creative professional exemption, an employee's primary duty must be the performance of work requiring invention, imagination, originality or talent in a recognized field of artistic or creative endeavor as opposed to routine mental, manual, mechanical or physical work. The exemption does not apply to work which can be produced by a person with general manual or intellectual ability and training. | 29 CFR Part 541 | ||
| Executive | § 541.100 | (2) Whose primary duty is management of the enterprise in which the employee is employed or of a customarily recognized department or subdivision thereof; (3) Who customarily and regularly directs the work of two or more other employees; and (4) Who has the authority to hire or fire other employees or whose suggestions and recommendations as to the hiring, firing, advancement, promotion or any other change of status of other employees are given particular weight. | $684 per week (or $455 per week if employed in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, Puerto Rico, or the U.S. Virgin Islands by employers other than the Federal government, or $380 per week if employed in American Samoa by employers other than the Federal government), exclusive of board, lodging or other facilities | Compensated on a salary basis | 29 CFR Part 541 |
| Highly compensated employee | § 541.601 | an employee with total annual compensation of at least $107,432 is deemed exempt under section 13(a)(1) of the Act if the employee customarily and regularly performs any one or more of the exempt duties or responsibilities of an executive, administrative or professional employee | an employee with total annual compensation of at least $107,432 is deemed exempt under section 13(a)(1) of the Act | “Total annual compensation” must include at least $684 per week paid on a salary or fee basis | 29 CFR Part 541 |
| Learned professional | § 541.301 | To qualify for the learned professional exemption, an employee's primary duty must be the performance of work requiring advanced knowledge in a field of science or learning customarily acquired by a prolonged course of specialized intellectual instruction. This primary duty test includes three elements: (1) The employee must perform work requiring advanced knowledge; (2) The advanced knowledge must be in a field of science or learning; and (3) The advanced knowledge must be customarily acquired by a prolonged course of specialized intellectual instruction. | $684 per week (or $455 per week if employed in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, Puerto Rico, or the U.S. Virgin Islands by employers other than the Federal government, or $380 per week if employed in American Samoa by employers other than the Federal government), exclusive of board, lodging or other facilities | Compensated on a salary or fee basis | 29 CFR Part 541 |
| Outside sales | § 541.500 | (1) Whose primary duty is: (i) making sales within the meaning of section 3(k) of the Act, or (ii) obtaining orders or contracts for services or for the use of facilities for which a consideration will be paid by the client or customer; and (2) Who is customarily and regularly engaged away from the employer's place or places of business in performing such primary duty. | The requirements of subpart G (salary requirements) of this part do not apply to the outside sales employees described in this section. | 29 CFR Part 541 | |
| Practice of law or medicine | § 541.304 | (1) Any employee who is the holder of a valid license or certificate permitting the practice of law or medicine or any of their branches and is actually engaged in the practice thereof; and (2) Any employee who is the holder of the requisite academic degree for the general practice of medicine and is engaged in an internship or resident program pursuant to the practice of the profession. | subpart G (salary requirements) of this part do not apply to the employees described in this section. | 29 CFR Part 541 | |
| Teaching professional | § 541.303 | any employee with a primary duty of teaching, tutoring, instructing or lecturing in the activity of imparting knowledge and who is employed and engaged in this activity as a teacher in an educational establishment by which the employee is employed. | Subpart G (salary requirements) of this part do not apply to the teaching professionals described in this section. | 29 CFR Part 541 |
Where this came from
Every record above links the page it was taken from and quotes the sentence that states it. These are the 1 source this dataset was assembled from.
- ecfr.govhttps://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-29/subtitle-B/chapter-V/subchapter-A/part-541
Machine-readable
- data.jsonThe whole dataset — every record with its source URL and source quote.
- Open Knowledge Format bundleOne JSON object per line — every record's frontmatter and quoted span exactly as it is held here, in one fetch.
- data.csvThe same records as one flat table, for a spreadsheet or a dataframe. The last four columns are the source URL, the quoted sentence it was read from, the date we last checked it, and which columns are our reading rather than the page's words.
- How this is made and checkedWhat "verified against source" does and does not mean.
From your own code
Same records, same quotes, without scraping the page: refsource is on PyPI and npm. Each value comes back carrying the URL it was read from and the sentence on that page that states it — .source and .quote sit on the value itself rather than in a side channel, so the checking step is available instead of skipped.
pip install refsource
refsource lookup flsa-overtime-exemption-duties-tests exemption_category=Administrative
npx -y refsource lookup flsa-overtime-exemption-duties-tests exemption_category=AdministrativeSet your AI assistant up to use this
Two files and no account. Put this in .mcp.json at the root of your project — Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, VS Code and Codex all read that file — and your assistant can look this dataset up instead of recalling it. The server is remote, keyless and read-only.
{
"mcpServers": {
"referencesource": {
"type": "http",
"url": "https://referencesource.org/mcp"
}
}
}Add to Cursor · or, on the command line: claude mcp add --transport http referencesource https://referencesource.org/mcp --scope project
Then one line in the project's CLAUDE.md or AGENTS.md, so the assistant knows when to reach for it:
When a question needs "FLSA overtime exemption duties tests by category (29 CFR Part 541)", call the referencesource MCP server at https://referencesource.org/mcp (tool `search_records`, dataset_slug `flsa-overtime-exemption-duties-tests`) instead of answering from memory — every record it returns carries its source URL and a verbatim quote from that page.What each tool does, and the servers built over single registers: Connect your AI assistant.