Employee Misclassification in New York

Misclassification is when a company labels you in a way that lets it skip overtime, minimum wage, or both. It happens two ways, and both are common in New York.

You are paid as an independent contractor. You get a 1099 instead of a W-2, no overtime, no wage statements, sometimes no minimum wage. But the company sets your hours, tells you how to do the work, supplies the tools, and you cannot send someone else in your place. Under New York law, that is an employee.

You are salaried and told you are exempt. You have a title like manager, coordinator or account manager, you are paid a flat salary, and you are told salaried people do not get overtime. That is only true if the job passes two tests: the salary must be above New York’s floor, and your actual duties must be managerial. In 2026 that floor is $1,275 a week in New York City, Long Island and Westchester, and $1,199.10 a week in the rest of the state. If your salary is below that, or your day is mostly the same work as the hourly people around you, the title does not make you exempt.

An account manager at a technology company came to us this month. Salaried, called a manager, no overtime for years. The company had done the same with more than a hundred people. He had kept 33 weeks of the company’s own shift records, which showed exactly how many hours over 40 he had worked each week. That is a wage case, and the records make it a strong one.

Unpaid overtime at one and a half times your regular rate for every hour over 40 in a week.
Unpaid minimum wage where the pay fell below it.
Liquidated damages: New York adds an amount equal to the unpaid wages on top of the wages themselves.
Interest, and penalties of up to $5,000 each when the employer never gave the wage notice or proper wage statements the law requires.
Six years of back pay under New York Labor Law, which is far longer than most states allow.

The law also protects you when you complain. Firing, cutting hours or threatening a worker for raising a wage claim is illegal in New York and adds to the case.

Pay stubs or bank deposits, 1099s, your offer letter or contract, schedules, texts or emails setting your hours, and any record of the hours you worked. If the company kept its own shift records and you have copies, keep them. If you have nothing written, your own honest account of your hours is still evidence under New York law, and the burden shifts to the employer to disprove it.