June 30, 2015, 2:07 pm

Here are some numbers from the DOL draft rule.

They think there are 21.4 million salaried workers subject to the wage test. Since the new number was set at the 40th percentile of these workers, presumably about 8.6 million will fall below the new number. But of these, only 4.6 million would be have to be shifted to hourly/overtime rules (not sure why the difference, I guess other tests must still apply as well).

Those 4.6 million are expected to cost employers an additional $1.2 billion in wages, which seems like a lot but equates to an additional $261 per person per year extra. In other words, a pittance for all this disruption.

The Left is already saying that companies won't adjust and all these folks will get raises. But the DOL obviously thinks differently. Either it thinks these folks are only working maybe an hour each of overtime per week, such that the overtime rules will only cost a few bucks a week, or the DOL thinks that a lot of work and wage rates are going to be pared back leaving folks about where they are today, except now as timeclock punchers rather than trusted salaried professionals.

I am still going through all the tables in the back where they generate this stuff, but there are a couple of admissions there you WILL NOT find on liberal blogs today