New York lets you reach back six years. That one fact changes the size of almost every case. Add automatic liquidated damages, prejudgment interest, fee-shifting and exempt salary thresholds well above the federal floor, and an ordinary misclassification claim becomes something an employer has to take seriously. Siegel Law Group represents employees. Not employers. Ever.
“Notwithstanding any other provision of law, an action to recover upon a liability imposed by this article must be commenced within six years.” That sentence appears in both the Minimum Wage Act and the Payment of Wages article, and it is three times the FLSA's ordinary two-year window.3 It is also tolled from the day you file a complaint with the Commissioner until the Department's order becomes final, and filing is not required before you sue: “Investigation by the commissioner shall not be a prerequisite to nor a bar against a person bringing a civil action under this article.”3
The minimum wage is $17.00 an hour in New York City, Long Island and Westchester, and $16.00 in the rest of the state. Those rates hold through 2027, because an inflation off-ramp in the statute was triggered. Home care aides are on a separate track and rise to $20.00 downstate and $19.00 upstate on January 1, 2027.4 Your overtime rate is built on your regular rate of pay, which includes most nondiscretionary bonuses and commissions.
As of January 1, 2026, the state's minimum weekly salary for the executive and administrative exemptions is $1,275.00 per week in New York City, Nassau, Suffolk and Westchester — $66,300 a year — and $1,199.10 per week elsewhere in the state, or $62,353.20 a year.5 The federal floor is $684 per week.6 If you are salaried below the New York figure, you are not exempt as an executive or administrative employee, full stop. New York does not set a state salary threshold for the professional exemption, so federal law governs there.5
Above the threshold, the duties still have to match. The pattern we litigate most often is the salaried case manager or utilization review employee applying a corporate guideline to a file and being called an administrator for it. A title is not a duty. The test itself: the administrative exemption.
If you prevail, the court “shall allow such employee to recover the full amount of any underpayment, all reasonable attorney's fees, prejudgment interest as required under the civil practice law and rules, and, unless the employer proves a good faith basis to believe that its underpayment of wages was in compliance with the law, an additional amount as liquidated damages equal to one hundred percent of the total amount of the wages found to be due.”7 Liquidated damages are the default, not a bonus — the employer carries the burden of proving good faith to avoid them. And if a judgment goes unpaid for 90 days, the total “shall automatically increase by fifteen percent.”8
An employee who never received the required hiring notice can recover $50 for each workday the violation continued, capped at $5,000, plus costs and fees. An employee who never received proper wage statements can recover $250 for each workday, also capped at $5,000.9 Two limits matter. First, the statute gives the employer an affirmative defense on the wage-statement claim if it made complete and timely payment of all wages due. Second, in federal court the Second Circuit held in 2024 that a plaintiff “must adequately allege a concrete injury-in-fact resulting from the failure to provide the wage notices and wage statements” — a bare paperwork violation is not enough to establish standing.10 We plead these claims where the facts support an actual downstream harm, and we do not build a case on them.
The regulation reads: “An employee shall receive one hour's pay at the basic minimum hourly wage rate, in addition to the minimum wage required in this Part for any day in which: (a) the spread of hours exceeds 10 hours; or (b) there is a split shift; or (c) both situations occur.”11 Note the words “in addition to the minimum wage required in this Part.” Outside the hospitality industry, this benefit is generally directed at workers at or near the minimum wage, not at every salaried employee who puts in a long day. If your case turns on spread of hours, it is worth a careful look rather than an assumption.
New York requires manual workers to be paid weekly. For years, late-but-full payment produced 100 percent liquidated damages. In May 2025 the Legislature pulled that back: where the employer paid on a regular payday no less frequently than semi-monthly, a first violation is limited to the lost interest on the delayed wages, and full liquidated damages return only for employers already subject to a prior finding.7 Frequency-of-pay cases are still viable. They are no longer automatic.
Section 215 bars an employer from discharging, threatening, penalizing or otherwise discriminating against you for complaining — to the employer, the Commissioner, the Attorney General or anyone else — about conduct you reasonably and in good faith believe violates the Labor Law. The statute says outright that a complaint “need not make explicit reference to any section or provision of this chapter” to be protected, and it expressly treats threatening to report a worker's or a family member's immigration status as retaliation.12 More on that here: retaliation protections.
You can file with the New York State Department of Labor, Division of Labor Standards, file a federal complaint with the U.S. Department of Labor, or sue. No administrative filing is required first.3 Where a whole job title was misclassified, a collective or class action is what forces an employer to fix it.
Jack Siegel has filed more than 100 federal overtime lawsuits in 27 federal courts, earned 50 or more class and collective certifications, and recovered more than $100 million for workers, as lead counsel on the firm's cases. Siegel Law Group has litigated unpaid overtime in New York. In Heckle v. Matrix Absence Management, brought in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Jack Siegel served as lead counsel for absence management specialists classified as exempt; the case resolved for $4,250,000. In Solis v. OrthoNet LLC, also in the Southern District of New York, utilization review employees recovered $3,000,000. Other results are listed here.
Six years, and the clock pauses while the Labor Department investigates a complaint you filed.3
Not as an executive or administrative employee. The 2026 downstate threshold is $1,275.00 a week, which is $66,300 a year.5
Liquidated damages of 100 percent are the default. The employer avoids them only by proving a good-faith basis to believe its underpayment complied with the law.7
Rarely, in federal court. Since 2024 you have to allege a concrete injury that flowed from the missing notice or statement, not just the violation.10
No. The statute says investigation by the Commissioner “shall not be a prerequisite to nor a bar against” a civil action.3
Every consultation is free and confidential, and we take overtime cases 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 attorney's fee and no costs. Call (214) 790-4454, email [email protected], or request a case review. Siegel Law Group PLLC, Austin, Texas. This page is general information, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship.
This website contains attorney advertising. Past results do not guarantee future outcomes.
Automated chat. Not legal advice, not a substitute for an attorney, and using it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Send your job title and how you are paid — no documents, no detailed case facts. An inquiry does not by itself stop the firm from representing someone else in a related matter.
Attorney advertising. Jack L. Siegel of Siegel Law Group PLLC, Austin, Texas, is responsible for this content.
Before you start
We opened this box, not you. The notice above applies. Start when you are ready, or close it and nothing happens.
