Paul Ryan Thinks Overtime Pay Is Actually—Wait for It—Bad for Workers

[dgauss]

10. Thanks for the thoughtful reply.

I think you have a point that the legislation won't increase pay as much as they say. It seems to be a theoretical number that assumes employees would continue to work the same hours, even though that doesn't make business sense. Most likely businesses will adjust to avoid paying employees more when they can just hire more people to maintain the same total hours worked without incurring overtime costs.

It will still cost a business more to hire a new employee. They are no longer getting free labor past 40 hours, but it will be cheaper for them to hire someone new to work at a standard rate than to pay overtime to current employees.

So in that scenario it still seems kind of like a win/win. Current employees aren't overworked and someone new gets hired. The one potential downside, from the business point of view, is that it will cost more. The effect of that I suppose is arguable.