Really interesting point, but it's also the law that you have to provide health benefits to employees working over 35 hours... so employers carefully avoid giving people more than 35 hours. And my guess is that most of the people earning less than the current threshold for overtime are in minimum-wage-type jobs where they're interchangeable. So the company will just hire another person to avoid the higher hourly rate rather than letting the first have more hours. Also, as he points out, the exemptions apply to nearly everyone. Nearly everyone who would consider themselves middle class certainly.