What Is an Exempt Employee in Texas? Salary, Duties, and Tests

An exempt employee in Texas is a salaried worker who meets the Fair Labor Standards Act’s salary and job-duties tests and, because of that status, is not entitled to overtime pay. In practice, qualifying means earning at least $684 per week ($35,568 per year) on a true salary basis and performing executive, administrative, or professional work as federal regulations define it.¹ Texas has no separate state exemption test. The Texas Workforce Commission applies the federal FLSA rules when deciding whether a worker is exempt or non-exempt.²

The Salary Floor You Have to Clear

The current minimum for the common white-collar exemptions is $684 per week, or $35,568 per year.¹ Below that figure, a worker cannot be classified as exempt no matter what their title says or what duties they perform.³

You may have read about higher thresholds that were supposed to take effect in 2024 and 2025. The Department of Labor finalized a rule in April 2024 raising the minimum to $844 per week in July 2024 and $1,128 per week in January 2025, but on November 15, 2024, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas vacated that rule entirely. The DOL is now enforcing the 2019 figure of $684 per week.¹ For now, $35,568 is the number that matters.

What “Salary Basis” Actually Requires

Hitting the dollar figure isn’t the whole salary test. The pay must come as a fixed, predetermined amount each pay period that doesn’t rise or fall based on hours worked or quantity produced.⁴ If an exempt employee performs any work in a given week, the full weekly salary is owed. Docking pay because the week was slow or because the employee left early on Friday is not permitted.

Employers may reduce an exempt employee’s pay only in a handful of narrow situations:

Full-day personal absences unrelated to sickness.
Full-day sick absences when the employer maintains a plan that provides replacement pay for lost salary.
Partial-day deductions tied to intermittent leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act.
Full-day disciplinary suspensions imposed in good faith for violating serious workplace-conduct rules.

Routinely making improper deductions can cost the exemption, not just for the affected worker but potentially for everyone in the same job classification.⁴ A safe-harbor rule can save an employer who makes an accidental deduction, provided the employer has a clearly communicated policy prohibiting improper deductions, reimburses the employee, and commits in good faith to following the rule going forward.⁵

Counting Bonuses Toward the Threshold

Nondiscretionary bonuses, incentive payments, and commissions can satisfy up to 10 percent of the standard weekly salary level. That means an employer must pay at least $615.60 per week in guaranteed salary and may cover the remaining $68.40 through qualifying bonus payments made at least annually. If salary plus bonuses falls short at the end of a 52-week period, the employer has one pay period to make a catch-up payment. Skipping the catch-up means the employee is treated as non-exempt for the entire preceding year and is owed overtime for every qualifying hour worked during that stretch.⁶ Discretionary bonuses, the kind the employer has no obligation to pay, don’t count toward the threshold at all.

The Duties Tests

Earning enough on a salary basis is only half the analysis. The actual work has to fit a recognized exemption category. A job title by itself never decides the question — what the person does day to day is what counts.³

Executive

The executive exemption fits employees whose primary job is managing the business or a recognized department within it. They must regularly direct the work of at least two other full-time employees and must have genuine authority over hiring and firing — or at the very least, their recommendations on personnel decisions must carry real weight with whoever makes the final call.⁷

Administrative

The administrative exemption covers office or non-manual work directly related to running the business or serving the employer’s customers. The decisive requirement is that the employee exercises independent judgment on significant matters. Following procedures is not the same as making decisions, and routine clerical work or data entry won’t qualify, even under a managerial-sounding title.⁷

Professional

The learned professional exemption applies to employees whose work requires advanced knowledge in a field such as science, medicine, law, engineering, or accounting, typically gained through a prolonged course of specialized education. A general college degree or on-the-job training alone usually isn’t enough.⁷ A separate creative professional exemption covers employees whose primary work involves invention, imagination, or originality in a recognized artistic or creative field such as music, writing, acting, or graphic arts.

Categories That Follow Different Rules

Several groups of workers don’t follow the standard three-part test.

Highly Compensated Employees

Someone earning at least $107,432 per year in total compensation (including nondiscretionary bonuses and commissions) faces a simplified duties test.¹ Instead of satisfying every element of the executive, administrative, or professional test, the employee only needs to regularly perform at least one exempt duty from any of those categories. The $684-per-week salary-basis requirement still applies, and the primary duty must involve office or non-manual work. Highly paid tradespeople, manual laborers, and production workers do not qualify regardless of their pay.⁸

Computer Employees

Systems analysts, software engineers, programmers, and similar roles can qualify if the primary duty involves designing, developing, testing, or documenting computer systems or programs. These employees may be paid on a salary basis at the standard threshold or on an hourly basis of at least $27.63 per hour.

Outside Sales

Outside sales employees are the one group with no salary threshold or salary-basis requirement at all.⁹ The primary duty must be making sales or obtaining orders for services, and the work must regularly happen away from the employer’s main office. Inside sales reps working from a desk or call center are not covered.

Teachers, Lawyers, and Doctors

Bona fide teachers at educational institutions, practicing lawyers, and licensed physicians are exempt from overtime regardless of pay. Neither the salary level nor the salary-basis test applies to them; the exemption rests entirely on the nature of the work.¹⁰

What Being Exempt Actually Means for You

The main consequence is losing the right to overtime pay. Non-exempt employees who work more than 40 hours in a workweek are owed at least one-and-a-half times their regular hourly rate for every additional hour.¹¹ Exempt employees get the same fixed salary whether they work 35 hours or 60. There’s no legal cap on how many hours an employer can require an exempt worker to put in during a single week, and employers aren’t required to track specific hours for wage-calculation purposes.

If You’ve Been Misclassified

Labeling a non-exempt worker as exempt is a costly mistake for a Texas employer. The usual remedy is back pay covering all the overtime the employee should have received, and the FLSA allows an equal amount in liquidated damages on top, which effectively doubles the total.¹²

The ordinary recovery window is two years. If the violation was willful, meaning the employer knew the classification was wrong or showed reckless disregard for whether it was correct, the window stretches to three years.¹² Employees who sue privately can also recover attorney’s fees and court costs. Repeat or willful violations of federal minimum-wage or overtime rules can draw civil penalties of up to $2,515 per violation.¹³

If you think you’ve been wrongly classified, you can file a complaint with the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division or with the Texas Workforce Commission.

1
U.S. Department of Labor. Earnings Thresholds for Executive, Administrative, and Professional Exemptions Under the FLSA
2
Texas Workforce Commission. Exempt / Non-Exempt Status Under the FLSA
3
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 17A – Exemption for Executive, Administrative, Professional, Computer and Outside Sales Employees Under the FLSA
4
eCFR. 29 CFR 541.602 – Salary Basis
5
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 17G – Salary Basis Requirement and the Part 541 Exemptions Under the FLSA
6
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 17U – Nondiscretionary Bonuses and Incentive Payments and Part 541 Exempt Employees
7
eCFR. 29 CFR Part 541 – Defining and Delimiting the Exemptions for Executive, Administrative, Professional, Computer and Outside Sales Employees
8
eCFR. 29 CFR 541.601 – Highly Compensated Employees
9
eCFR. 29 CFR 541.500 – General Rule for Outside Sales Employees
10
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 17D – Exemption for Professional Employees Under the FLSA
11
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 23 – Overtime Pay Requirements of the FLSA
12
U.S. Department of Labor. Back Pay
13
eCFR. 29 CFR Part 578 – Tip Retention, Minimum Wage, and Overtime Violations – Civil Money Penalties