Missouri is one of the best states in the country to be a worker who was cheated out of overtime. Not because the rule is unusual — time and a half over forty hours, same as federal law. Because of what Missouri makes the employer pay when it loses: your unpaid wages plus twice that amount again as liquidated damages, plus costs and attorney’s fees.1 Most pages describing Missouri law say “double damages.” Read the statute. It is more than that.
“No employer shall employ any of his employees for a workweek longer than forty hours unless such employee receives compensation for his employment in excess of the hours above specified at a rate not less than one and one-half times the regular rate at which he is employed.”2 One carve-out: an amusement or recreation business meeting the federal test owes overtime only after fifty-two hours.3
Missouri voters passed Proposition A in November 2024. The statute now reads that the floor rose to $13.75 on January 1, 2025 and “shall be increased by $1.25 per hour, to $15.00 per hour, effective January 1, 2026.”4
Here is the part nobody mentions. The legislature came back in 2025 and cut the escalator: cost-of-living adjustment now applies only to years “ending December 31, 2024.”4 The Department of Labor says it plainly — “the minimum wage will no longer be annually adjusted by the Consumer Price Index.”5 So $15.00 is not a waypoint. It is the ceiling until the legislature moves again. Tipped workers get at least half of it, $7.50, with the employer making up the difference to $15.00.6 Local ordinances will not help: Missouri bars cities and counties from setting their own floor.7
Missouri writes no overtime exemption rules of its own. The statute lifts the duty for employees “who are exempt from federal minimum wage or overtime requirements,” and directs that the section “shall be interpreted in accordance with the Fair Labor Standards Act.”8 The federal duties test and salary level control. That level is $684 per week, and it is solid: a 2024 rule would have raised it, a court vacated that rule, and the Labor Department published a technical amendment in May 2026 formally restoring $684 and the $107,432 highly-compensated threshold.9
Clearing the salary line is necessary, not sufficient. The job has to actually be executive, administrative, or professional work. If you spend your day carrying a caseload, running a queue, or doing what the people you supposedly manage do, that is a misclassification problem whatever the offer letter said — and it is what this firm concentrates in, for case managers, care coordinators, and utilization review nurses above all.
Missouri does exclude some nonprofit work, and the exclusion is narrow by its own terms. It reaches an individual “engaged in the activities of an educational, charitable, religious, or nonprofit organization where the employer-employee relationship does not, in fact, exist or where the services rendered to the organization are on a voluntary basis.”10 A salaried employee on a schedule, under supervision, carrying assigned work, is not a volunteer. A separate exclusion covers retail and service businesses under $500,000 a year.10
“All actions for the collection of any deficiency in wages shall be commenced within three years of the accrual of the cause of action.”1 That is a rolling window, not a countdown to one date: the oldest week in your claim drops out every week you wait and does not come back. If you were also shorted off the clock — pre-shift setup, charting after hours, a lunch the system deducted automatically — those weeks are part of the same claim and expire on the same schedule. More on wage deadlines.
Under federal law nobody recovers unless they sign up: “No employee shall be a party plaintiff to any such action unless he gives his consent in writing to become such a party and such consent is filed in the court in which such action is brought.”11 Missouri’s statute has no such requirement — the employee “may bring any legal action necessary to collect the claim.”1 That is why we often plead both: a federal collective action alongside a Missouri class claim, so the people who never saw the notice are still in. See how collective and class actions work.
One more line deserves attention: “Any agreement between the employee and the employer to work for less than the wage rate shall be no defense to the action.”1 If they had you sign something, that document is not the end of it.
We will be straight with you, because other sites are not. The Missouri Minimum Wage Law does make retaliation unlawful — discharging or discriminating against an employee “who has notified the director that he has not been paid wages,” caused a proceeding to be instituted, or testified. But it is written as a criminal provision, a class C misdemeanor, keyed to notifying the Director rather than to complaining to your boss.12 It is not a damages claim you file yourself. The civil retaliation remedy is federal, and it is real: reinstatement, lost wages, liquidated damages, fees.11 If you were written up, cut back, or fired after raising overtime, say so in the first conversation — it changes which statute we lead with. See retaliation protections.
Three routes, not equal. A wage claim with the Missouri Department of Labor and Industrial Relations, Division of Labor Standards. A complaint to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division. Or suit. Nothing in § 290.527 requires an agency filing first, and for a misclassification claim across a job title, litigation is the only route that reaches the full damages and fees the statute authorizes.
Siegel Law Group has litigated overtime claims for Missouri workers in the United States District Court for the Western District of Missouri, including Woods v. CVS Caremark and Krott v. New Directions, as lead counsel.13 Jack Siegel grew up in a working-class family; his mother spent eighteen years at a CVS call center before being pushed out. That is why this firm only ever represents the worker.14 Read about the firm and the cases. You do not need a lawyer sitting in Kansas City to bring this claim.
Yes. The statute awards “the full amount of the wage rate and an additional amount equal to twice the unpaid wages as liquidated damages,” less anything already paid, plus costs and fees.1 That is materially more than the federal doubling.
Not automatically. The statute limits cost-of-living adjustments to years ending December 31, 2024, and the Department of Labor states the wage “will no longer be annually adjusted by the Consumer Price Index.”45 It stays at $15.00 until the legislature acts.
Being salaried does not answer it, and neither does being at a nonprofit — that exclusion applies where no employer-employee relationship exists or the work is volunteered.10 For a scheduled, supervised, salaried employee the question is the federal duties test and the $684 salary level.89
Three years from accrual, running week by week, so the oldest back pay drops off continuously.1
On the Missouri claim, potentially yes — no written-consent requirement. On the federal claim, no.111
Every consultation is free and confidential, and the firm works on contingency — we advance the costs of the case, those costs are repaid out of any recovery, and if we do not recover you owe us nothing: no fee and no costs. Request a free case review or call (214) 790-4454.
This page is general information about Missouri and federal wage law and is not legal advice. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Law current as of October 3, 2026.
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