The Labor Department is abandoning a 2025 proposal to strip nine parts of Fair Labor Standards Act interpretive guidance out of the Code of Federal Regulations. Among the nine: 29 CFR part 776, whose Subpart B is the department’s standing interpretation of when construction work falls under federal minimum wage and overtime law, and part 782, which covers the overtime exemption for motor carrier employees.
The Wage and Hour Division’s withdrawal notice went on public inspection Oct. 6 and is scheduled for Federal Register publication Oct. 7. It takes effect on publication.
What the FLSA interpretive bulletins withdrawal covers
The July 2, 2025, proposal (90 FR 28985) targeted parts 775, 776, 779, 782, 783, 784, 789, 793 and 794 of Title 29. The department’s reasoning then was procedural. These parts were never issued or amended through notice-and-comment rulemaking, they don’t carry the force of law, and they could be “repurposed as sub-regulatory guidance” outside the CFR.
The withdrawal gives one reason: the proposal “no longer aligns with the Department’s needs, priorities, and objectives.”
WHD says it received six substantive comments during a 30-day window that closed Aug. 1, 2025. Two supported removal. Four opposed it. The agency denied 10 requests for more time. Administrator Andrew B. Rogers signed the withdrawal Sept. 28.
Why 29 CFR 776 Subpart B matters for construction overtime
Subpart B, sections 776.22 through 776.30, is titled “Construction Industry.” It sets out WHD’s view of when employees building, repairing or maintaining facilities are engaged in interstate commerce and so individually covered by the Act. Most contractors of any size are covered anyway as enterprises. The bulletin still earns its keep at the margins, for small subcontractors under the Act’s $500,000 enterprise threshold, and in litigation.
Part 782 reaches more payrolls. It interprets the exemption that takes certain drivers, driver’s helpers, loaders and mechanics out of FLSA overtime when their work affects the safe operation of trucks in interstate commerce. A contractor running its own dump trucks, mixers or lowboys across a state line has had to read it.
The practical stake is a defense, not a duty. Under the Portal-to-Portal Act, an employer that relied in good faith on a written WHD interpretation can raise that reliance against a wage claim. Guidance printed in the CFR is easy to cite and hard to revise quietly. Guidance moved to a website is less of both.
What construction employers have to do now
Nothing, which is the news.
There’s no compliance date, no new recordkeeping and no change to how overtime is computed for crews or drivers. The nine parts stay where they are, with the same legal weight they had before: persuasive, not binding.
What the four-page notice doesn’t say is more interesting. It doesn’t identify which industries objected. It doesn’t say whether WHD plans to revise any of the nine parts, some of which have gone decades without an update. And it leaves open whether a narrower proposal could come back.
Contractors are hiring into a tight market. Construction unemployment hit 3.1 percent in August, and the September jobs report showed 11,000 jobs added. Overtime is one way firms cover the gap.
The rulebook for it just stayed put.