Last week, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) formally rescinded the 2024 overtime rule that would have significantly expanded overtime eligibility, and reverted to the 2019 salary threshold framework.

The 2024 rule was finalized and partially went into effect in 2024, but courts vacated the rule after the first salary threshold increase. Now, the rule has been formally revoked.

The move changes the lower salary threshold for overtime pay to $35,568, instead of the planned $58,656. If the 2024 overtime rule had fully gone into effect as designed, home-based care employers would have had to reclassify several roles as non-exempt.

This rescission reduces near-term labor costs and compliance pressure for home-based care providers – but it doesn’t solve the industry’s labor problem. In the long term, providers must find ways to improve retention and advocate for better reimbursement.

The rescission also includes a tradeoff for providers: risk of burnout for workers in a stretched-thin labor market.

In this week’s exclusive, members-only HHCN+ Update, I’ll unpack what reverting to the 2019 salary framework means for the home-based care industry, offering analysis and key takeaways, including:

– The flexibility the DOL’s rescission gives providers

– The tradeoff for this flexibility

– The safe staffing play

More flexibility in how work gets done

The rescission of the 2024 rule offers home-based care providers several benefits, but the importance of all of these can be boiled down to flexibility.

The rule means fewer employees must be paid overtime, which allows employers to let their workers flex their hours week to week. Employees can answer calls after hours without triggering overtime, and don’t have to track every minute.

This also potentially reduces compliance risk compared with what might have happened if the 2024 rule had been fully implemented. In that case, more hourly non-exempt staff would require stricter time tracking and could pose a compliance risk if they work off the clock.

Employers may now have to worry less about monitoring off-the-clock work, which could save on administrative costs. It will also be less critical to ensure that workers below the 2024 salary threshold but above the 2019 threshold are scheduled in a way that most avoids unplanned overtime.

Having fewer people in the non-exempt category means less overhead managing staffing costs. So lowering the threshold lets providers operate with more flexibility and less administrative friction.

The tradeoff

For home-based care providers, lowering the threshold doesn’t change how much work needs to get done — it changes how much of that work shows up on the payroll. The work will still get done. After-hours calls will still happen. Documentation will still spill over. And the same supervisors, coordinators and managers who would have been swept into overtime eligibility under the 2024 rule can still end up working 45–55 hour weeks.

From where I sit, that’s exactly why this can’t be treated as a “workforce fix.” One of the highest-priority problems in home-based care is still retention.

We’ve seen some encouraging signs about the workforce status quo in recent history. The news from the DOL implicates mostly salaried “white-collar” roles (supervisors, managers, coordinators), but I think it’s helpful to look at retention metrics in home-based care to get a picture of what’s working right now. The lesson we can learn from the front lines is clear: pay can move needles. Last year, I covered a report showing that turnover rates among home care aides (HCAs) and certified nursing assistants (CNAs) had dropped due to pay increases. In 2025, the national average hourly rate for HCAs and CNAs increased by 4.93%, compared to 4.86% in 2024. Sign-on bonuses for HCAs also increased, from $2,129 in 2024 to $2,304 in 2025.

These pay bumps led to a drop in turnover for HCAs and CNAs, from 36.31% in 2024 to 34.17% in 2025. Such statistics are encouraging, especially when providers have poured time and money into methods to retain workers like gamification, paid time off (PTO) and worker training. 

While these statistics show some improvement in the retention beast, the cause of this bump was chalked up to pay. If at least part of retention improvement is rooted in pay, then the long-term “win” from a lower salary threshold is not automatic. Yes, balance sheets may look better in the short term if fewer salaried roles become overtime-eligible. But if that relief is converted into more uncompensated hours, the problem could just change to increased turnover.

But provider execs also tell me regularly that what keeps their employees isn’t pay. I often hear that flexibility, benefits and training are often more important than pay in their workers’ minds. And I think that comes down to my main point here: if you’re going to take advantage of “flexibility” in labor rules, you have to pair it with intentional recognition and rewards, so flexibility doesn’t become a euphemism for “always on.”

This is also where the importance of technological evolution within home-based care comes into play. I have heard from provider execs on multiple occasions that they are trying to reduce “pajama time,” in which workers finish their shifts only to go home and have to finish notes when they would ideally be putting their feet up or spending time with family and friends. Efficiency tools can reduce workload and problems like pajama time.

So DOL’s move is a short-term win for providers, in that it reduces immediate payroll exposure and compliance disruption. But the providers who benefit most will be those who treat it as a temporary pressure release, not a solution. Reimbursement still sets the ceiling for what the industry can sustainably pay. Retention is still the fight. And unless employers use this moment to double down with investments in smarter workflows, better technology and a more deliberate total benefits package, the workforce math doesn’t change.