NJ Department of Labor Re-Adopts Inside Sales Exemption

Effective February 21, 2012, the inside salesperson exemption was re-adopted by the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development (NJDOL) as part of the Administrative Exemption contained in New Jersey’s wage and hour laws. When the NJDOL adopted the so-called “white collar” exemptions for Administrative, Executive, Professional, Outside Sales, and Computer employees as contained in the Federal Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) in September 2011, it eliminated this long-recognized exemption. As we previously reported, the NJDOL later admitted that the elimination of this exemption was inadvertent and proposed regulations to reinstate it.

Those regulations have been adopted and N.J.A.C. 12:56-7.2(c) now states:

“Administrative” shall also include an employee whose primary duty consists of sales activity and who receives at least 50 percent of his or her total compensation from commissions and a total compensation of not less than $400.00 per week.

If you have any questions regarding the treatment of employees as exempt or non-exempt or the proposed adoption of the inside sales exemption, please feel free to contact any one of the attorneys in the Gibbons Employment & Labor Law Department.