On April 5, the Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division issued regulations under the Fair Labor Standards Act intended to conform the rules with miscellaneous legislative amendments enacted in previous years. The most important of these changes involves an update to the FLSA's tip credit rules for restaurant workers. The tip credit allows restaurant employers to pay wait staff a sub-minimum wage as long as their tips make up the difference between wages paid and the minimum wage.

The new tip credit rules increase this difference from $4.42 to $5.12 to reflect increases in the statutory minimum wage. Apart from this increase, the most noteworthy result of the new rules involves what DOL decided not to change. This includes proposals to allow the cost of employer-provided meals to be counted toward minimum wage, rules on use of compensatory time by public sector employees and changes to the fluctuating workweek pay method to allow employers to include premium pay in the salary calculations.

The new rules take effect May 5, and can be found here.