Executive exemption
Arkansas exempts executive employees from its minimum wage and overtime requirements. AR Code 11-4-203(3)(A); AR Wage and Hour Regs 010.14-106(B) To qualify for the exemption, an employee must meet the requirements established under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act. AR Wage and Hour Regs 010.14-106(B)(1)(a)
For charitable and religious organizations and employers whose gross sales are less than $500,000 per year, employees need only earn $360 per week on a salary or fee basis to qualify for the exemption, instead of the $455 per week required by the Fair Labor Standards Act. AR Wage and Hour Regs 010.14-106(B)(1)(e)
Administrative exemption
Arkansas exempts administrative employees from its minimum wage and overtime requirements. AR Code 11-4-203(3)(A); AR Wage and Hour Regs 010.14-106(B) To qualify for the exemption, an employee must meet the requirements established under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act. AR Wage and Hour Regs 010.14-106(B)(1)(a)
For charitable and religious organizations and employers whose gross sales are less than $500,000 per year, employees need only earn $360 per week on a salary or fee basis to qualify for the exemption, instead of the $455 per week required by the Fair Labor Standards Act. AR Wage and Hour Regs 010.14-106(B)(1)(e)
Professional exemption
Arkansas exempts professional employees from its minimum wage and overtime requirements. AR Code 11-4-203(3)(A); AR Wage and Hour Regs 010.14-106(B) To qualify for the exemption, an employee must meet the requirements established under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act. AR Wage and Hour Regs 010.14-106(B)(1)(a)
For charitable and religious organizations and employers whose gross sales are less than $500,000 per year, employees need only earn $360 per week on a salary or fee basis to qualify for the exemption, instead of the $455 per week required by the Fair Labor Standards Act. AR Wage and Hour Regs 010.14-106(B)(1)(e) Arkansas includes computer employees exempt under the Fair Labor Standards Act in its definition of professional employees.AR Wage and Hour Regs 010.14-106(B)(1)(a)
Outside salesman exemption
Arkansas exempts outside salesmen from its minimum wage and overtime requirements. AR Code 11-4-203(3)(A); AR Wage and Hour Regs 010.14-106(B) To qualify for the exemption, an employee must meet the requirements established under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act. AR Wage and Hour Regs 010.14-106(B)(1)(a)
Computer employee exemption
Arkansas exempts computer systems analysts, computer programmers, software engineers, or other similarly skilled workers from its minimum wage and overtime requirements. AR Code 11-4-203(3)(A); AR Wage and Hour Regs 010.14-106(B) It includes them in the definition of professional employees. AR Wage and Hour Regs 010.14-106(B)(1)(b) To qualify for the exemption, an employee must meet the requirements established under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act. AR Wage and Hour Regs 010.14-106(B)(1)(a)
For charitable and religious organizations and employers whose gross sales are less than $500,000 per year, employees need only earn $360 per week on a salary or fee basis to qualify for the exemption, instead of the $455 per week required by the Fair Labor Standards Act. AR Wage and Hour Regs 010.14-106(B)(1)(e)
Other minimum wage and overtime exemptions
The following employees are exempt from Arkansas’ minimum wage and overtime requirements:
- students who perform services for a school, college, or university where they are enrolled and regularly attend, AR Code 11-4-203(3)(B); AR Wage and Hour Regs 010.14-106(B)(2);
- individuals employed by the US government, AR Code 11-4-203(3)(C); AR Wage and Hour Regs 010.14-106(B)(3);
- individuals engaged in services for educational, charitable, or nonprofit organizations where the services are performed gratuitously or an employer-employee relationship does not in fact exist (this does not include individuals working for for-profit enterprises in return for a donation to the educational, charitable, religious, or nonprofit organization), AR Code 11-4-203(3)(D); AR Wage and Hour Regs 010.14-106(B)(3);
- bona fide independent contractors, AR Code 11-4-203(3)(E); AR Wage and Hour Regs 010.14-106(B)(5);
- individuals working for an agricultural employer who did not use more than 500 man-days of agricultural labor in any calendar quarter of the preceding calendar year, AR Code 11-4-203(3)(F); AR Wage and Hour Regs 010.14-106(B)(6);
- parents, spouses, children, or other members of the immediately family working for an agricultural employer, AR Code 11-4-203(3)(G); AR Wage and Hour Regs 010.14-106(B)(7);
- individuals who:
- work as hand-harvest laborers;
- are paid on a piece-rate basis in an operation that is customarily and generally recognized as paying on a piece-rate basis;
- commutes daily from their own residence to the farm on which they work; and
- has worked in agriculture fewer than thirteen (13) weeks in the preceding calendar year.
- migrant workers who:
- are sixteen (16) years old or younger;
- works as a hand-harvest laborer;
- are paid on a piece-rate basis in an operation that is customarily and generally recognized as paying on a piece-rate basis;
- work on the same farm as their parent(s); and
- are paid the same rate as employees over 16 years old working on the same farm.
- individuals working primarily in the range production of livestock, AR Code 11-4-203(3)(J); AR Wage and Hour Regs 010.14-106(B)(10);
- individuals who plant or tend trees; cruise, survey, or fell timber; or prepare or transport logs or other forestry products to a mill, processing plant, or railroad or other transportation terminal, so long as the number of employees employed by the employer does not exceed eight (8), AR Code 11-4-203(3)(K); AR Wage and Hour Regs 010.14-106(B)(11);
- individuals working for non-profit recreational or educational camps that do not operate for more than seven (7) months in any calendar year, AR Code 11-4-203(3)(L); AR Wage and Hour Regs 010.14-106(B)(12);
- individuals working for nonprofit welfare agencies who serve as houseparents who are:
- directly involved in caring for children who reside in residential facilities of the agency and who are orphans, in foster care, abused, neglected, abandoned, homeless, in need of supervision or otherwise in crisis situations that lead to out-of-home placements; and
- compensated at an annual rate of not less than thirteen thousand dollars ($13,000) or at an annual rate of not less than ten thousand dollars ($10,000) if the employee resides in the residential facility and receives room and board, AR Code 11-4-203(3)(M); AR Wage and Hour Regs 010.14-106(B)(13);
- individuals who work in connection with the publication of any weekly, semiweekly, or daily newspaper with a circulation of less than four thousand, the majority of which is within the county where the newspaper is published or neighboring counties, AR Wage and Hour Regs 010.14-106(B)(14);
- individuals working on a casual basis in domestic service to provide babysitting services or companionship to individual who, because of age or infirmity, are unable to care for themselves, AR Wage and Hour Regs 010.14-106(B)(15);
- individuals who delivery newspapers to consumers, AR Wage and Hour Regs 010.14-106(B)(16); and
- home workers who make wreaths composed principally of natural holly, pine, cedar, or other evergreens, including the harvesting of materials used to make the wreaths, AR Wage and Hour Regs 010.14-106(B)(17);
- individuals employed an organized camp or a religious or nonprofit educational organization if:
- the organization does not operate from more the seven (7) months in a calendar year; or
- during the preceding calendar year, the average receipts for any six (6) months of the preceding calendar year were not more than thirty-three and one-third percent (33 1/3%) of the average receipts of the organization for the other six (6) months of the preceding calendar year.
Overtime only exemptions
The following employees are exempt from Arkansas overtime requirements, but not its minimum wage requirements, AR Code 11-4-211(a); AR Wage and Hour Regs 010.14-106(C):
- individuals working for an agricultural employer;
- individuals subject to the authority of the US Department of Transportation to regulate minimum job qualifications and maximum hours of service;
- individuals working for an employer operating a rail carrier subject to 49 USC part A of subtitle IV;
- individuals working for an air carrier subject to Title II of the federal Railway Labor Act;
- individuals working as outside buyers of poultry, eggs, cream, or milk in their raw or natural state;
- individuals working as seamen;
- individuals working as announcers, news editors, or chief engineers by radio or television stations which have their major studio in:
- a city or town with a population of 100,000 or fewer residents, according to the latest available decennial census figures as compiled by the US Bureau of the Census, except when the city or town is part of a standard metropolitan statistical area, as defined and designated by the US Office of Management and Budget which has a total population in excess of 100,000 residents; or
- a city or town with 25,000 or fewer residents which is part of a standard metropolitan statistical area, as described above, but is at least 40 airline miles from the principal city in the area;
- salesmen, partsmen, or mechanics who primarily sell or service automobiles, trucks, or farm implements, if they work for a non-manufacturing establishment that primarily sells such vehicles or implements to the ultimate purchaser;
- salemen who primarily sell trailers, boats, or aircraft, if they work for a non-manufacturing establishment that primarily sells trailers, boats, or aircraft to the ultimate purchaser;
- individuals working as drivers or driver’s helpers making local deliveries and who are compensated on a per trip basis, or other delivery payment plan;
- individuals working in connection with operating or maintaining ditches that are not owned or operated for profit or operated on a sharecrop basis, and which are used exclusively for supply and storing water of which 90 percent was ultimately used for agricultural purposes during the preceding calendar year;
- individuals working in connection with livestock auction operations, so long as the individuals primarily work during the week by the same employer in agriculture and are paid for working in the auction operations at a rate that is not less than Arkansas’ minimum wage;
- individuals working in the area of production by an employer commonly recognized as a country elevator, including employers that sell products and services used in the operation of a farm if no more than five individual work in such operations for the employer;
- individuals work in processing maple sap into sugar (other than refined sugar) or syrup;
- individuals who work transporting and preparing for transportation fruits and vegetables, whether or not performed by the farmer, from the farm to a place of first processing or first marketing with the state;
- individuals who transport, whether or not performed by the farmer, between the farm and any point within the state of persons working or that will work in harvesting fruits or vegetables;
- drivers working for a taxicab operation;
- individuals working for public agencies who in any workweek are employed in fire protection activities or individuals who in any workweek is employed in law enforcement activities (including security personnel in correction institutions or jails), if the public agencies employ during the workweek fewer than five (5) employees in fire protection or law enforcement activities, as the case may be;
- individuals working in domestic service in a household and who resides in the household;
- individuals who work at amusement or recreational establishments located in national parks or national forests or on land in the National Wildlife System if the individuals:
- are employees of a private entity engaged in providing services or facilities for such locations, and
- are paid not less than one and one-half (1½) times their regular rate for all hours worked in excess of fifty-six (56) in a workweek.
