Home Care Bill Locks In Exemptions: Caregivers Still Excluded from Minimum Wage and Overtime Pay

This bill, titled the “Ensuring Access to Affordable and Quality Home Care for Seniors and People with Disabilities Act,” is focused entirely on cementing existing labor law exemptions for in-home care workers. Essentially, it ensures that certain caregivers—specifically those providing “companionship services” and “live-in domestic services”—remain exempt from federal minimum wage and overtime rules under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The core message here is that the status quo for paying these workers is being officially preserved, which has significant implications for the people doing the hardest work.

The Fine Print on Companionship

The bill spends time clarifying what “companionship services” actually are. It defines them as offering fellowship, care, and protection for the elderly or people with disabilities, including non-medical personal care and household tasks directly related to the person being cared for (SEC. 2). Here’s the catch: it explicitly states that general household work cannot take up more than 20 percent of the employee’s total weekly hours worked. If the care requires a trained medical professional, like a registered nurse, it no longer counts as companionship service under this definition. This 20% rule is meant to draw a line, but in the chaos of real-life caregiving, tracking that percentage week-to-week is going to be an administrative headache for employers and a potential point of contention for workers.

Keeping Care Affordable, or Keeping Wages Low?

The most impactful sections of the bill are SEC. 3 and SEC. 4, which are designed to “preserve” these existing pay exemptions. For workers providing companionship services (SEC. 3), the bill ensures they can still be legally excluded from standard minimum wage and overtime protections. The same goes for live-in domestic service workers (SEC. 4). For the families receiving care, this preservation might help keep costs down, which is often cited as the benefit. But for the caregivers themselves—the home health aides, the nannies, and the companions—this means their wages can legally be suppressed below the federal minimum wage, and they can be required to work long hours without the safety net of overtime pay.

The Real-World Cost of the Exemption

Think about a live-in caregiver working 24/7 support for an elderly person. Under this preserved exemption, that worker can be legally paid a flat rate that, when broken down by hours, falls far below what most of us consider a baseline minimum wage. The bill ensures that the agencies or households employing these workers can continue to operate with these lower labor costs. While the bill aims to ensure “access” to care, the economic burden of achieving that access is placed squarely on the shoulders of the workers providing the service. For workers already struggling with rising costs, this bill locks them out of basic federal labor protections, directly impacting their ability to make ends meet.