Wage Structure

Setting the SSOL floor is only half the work. The other half is ensuring the floor cannot be circumvented - through misclassification, visa manipulation, tip substitution, or scheduling practices that prevent workers from ever reaching the 2,000-hour standard. This page covers how wages are expressed under SSOL and the protections that close those circumvention paths.

Expressing wages relative to SSOL

Under SSOL, wages above the floor are expressed as a relationship to SSOL rather than as fixed dollar amounts. Two formats work:

This notation handles any premium the work itself justifies. Hazard pay, overnight shifts, physical demands, specialized skills, high-turnover roles - all of these are priced above the floor using the same format. The floor adjusts each quarter; the premium above it stays intact. An employer paying SSOL + $3.00 for difficult working conditions is always paying $3.00 above whatever the floor is, regardless of where the floor moves.

This preserves the real value of negotiated wages above the floor without requiring renegotiation every quarter. A raise negotiated when SSOL was $18/hr still means the same thing relative to the floor when SSOL is $24/hr. Both employer and worker have certainty about the relationship even when the underlying dollar amount changes.

Workers at exactly SSOL are simply paid SSOL. Their wage is the floor and adjusts with it.

What prevents employers from paying exactly the floor

Nothing under SSOL that does not already exist now. The same market forces that currently push wages above the minimum wage continue to operate: competition for workers, turnover costs, productivity differences, skill requirements. An employer who pays exactly SSOL for genuinely difficult or specialized work will lose workers to employers offering SSOL+ for easier work. That pressure exists today and does not disappear under SSOL.

What SSOL changes is the floor those market forces operate above. Currently an employer can pay minimum wage for hard work and rely on the fact that workers with few options will accept the terms because the alternative is worse. SSOL does not eliminate competition at the margin - it removes the worst version of that dynamic by ensuring the floor reflects what survival actually costs. Above that floor, labor markets compete the same way they always have.

Payroll tax simplification

One of the most practical benefits of SSOL for employers is the simplification of payroll tax administration. Currently, employers must calculate and remit Social Security, Medicare, federal unemployment, and state unemployment separately - each with its own rate, its own wage cap, its own filing schedule, and its own compliance requirements. This complexity costs employers real money in accounting time and software, particularly small businesses.

Under SSOL, all payroll taxes consolidate into a single calculation:

SSOL × 2,000 hours = annual gross wages
Annual gross wages × combined tax rate = total tax obligation
Employee receives SSOL. Government receives the tax. One calculation.

The combined tax rate is set to be revenue-equivalent to what the current multi-rate system collects, so no government funding is lost. The employer's administrative burden drops. The employee's paycheck is clearer. What currently requires tracking multiple rates and caps becomes a single multiplier.

Tips

Tips have no place in the SSOL wage calculation. The SSOL is the full wage - it covers every essential cost a worker has. An employer cannot factor expected tips, historical tip averages, or any tip income into their SSOL wage obligations.

Tips belong entirely to the worker who receives them. They are a gratuity from a customer expressing appreciation for service - an extra on top of compensation, not a component of it. The current system in which employers legally pay below minimum wage and rely on tips to make up the difference treats a customer's voluntary gesture as part of the employer's payroll obligation. That arrangement disappears under SSOL. The employer pays the SSOL floor. Whatever the customer leaves belongs to the worker on top of that, not in place of it.

This returns tips to what they were originally intended to be: a recognition of good service, freely given, that the worker keeps entirely. Not a subsidy to the employer's labor costs.

The 3x salary threshold

One of the most common wage exploitation mechanisms in the current system is the misclassification of workers as salaried employees. The process is straightforward: give a minimum-wage worker a modest raise, give them a manager title, reclassify them as exempt from overtime, and require them to work 50 or 55 hours per week. The effective hourly rate drops below what they were earning before the "promotion."

Under SSOL, an employee cannot be classified as salaried - and therefore exempt from overtime - unless their income is at least 3x the current SSOL wage. At an SSOL of $20/hr, that means a salary of at least $120,000 per year. You cannot exempt someone from overtime with a $32,000 salary and a manager badge.

The 3x threshold is not arbitrary. It represents genuinely professional compensation - the level at which the salary structure actually makes sense as an employment arrangement rather than as an overtime-avoidance mechanism. At that income level, the worker has real bargaining power, real alternatives, and real reason to accept the trade-off of a salary for schedule flexibility.

Because the threshold is expressed as a multiple of SSOL, it adjusts automatically. As SSOL rises, the salary threshold rises with it. Unlike the current federal salary threshold - which has been frozen at politically negotiated levels for years at a time - the SSOL-based threshold tracks economic reality continuously.

The 12x H-1B floor

The H-1B visa program is intended to allow American employers to hire highly specialized foreign workers when qualified domestic candidates are not available. In practice, the program's wage floor has remained low enough that it can be used to staff ordinary technical roles at below-market wages, depressing compensation across the affected fields and displacing workers who would otherwise fill those positions.

Under SSOL, all employment-based visa workers must earn at least 12x the current SSOL wage. At SSOL of $20/hr, that is $240,000 per year - compensation that genuinely reflects the cost of a highly specialized professional brought in because no domestic candidate exists with equivalent expertise. At that level, the visa is economically rational only for roles where the employer truly cannot find a domestic candidate and the position justifies the compensation.

The 12x multiplier serves three purposes:

Industries that legitimately depend on migrant labor - agriculture is the primary example - are handled through a separate structure with its own wage floor set at a level appropriate to that sector, administered through a distinct program with appropriate oversight.

Schedule certainty for part-time workers

SSOL's 2,000-hour standard assumes workers can actually reach 2,000 hours. For workers combining multiple jobs to get there, schedule certainty at each one is not a convenience - it is the foundation the whole arrangement depends on.

Each job comes with a schedule. That schedule is committed. When a worker takes a second job, they build around the first. When they take a third, they build around both. Each job knows exactly what hours it is getting. A change to one job's schedule does not just affect that job - it requires renegotiating around every other job in the worker's week. What looks like a minor shift adjustment to one employer can collapse the entire structure.

Under SSOL, a part-time schedule is fixed. It does not change without the worker's agreement. This closes a straightforward abuse: an employer who dislikes their employee working multiple jobs can currently force a schedule change that makes the other jobs impossible, then offer the worker a choice between compliance and termination. The fixed schedule removes that lever. The worker's committed hours at other jobs have equal standing to the employer's scheduling preferences.

Employers who commit to 40 hours per week retain full scheduling flexibility within standard legal constraints - their worker is not splitting time elsewhere and the constraint does not apply. Employers who offer fewer than 40 hours do not get to treat the remaining hours as theirs to control. The worker's other commitments have equal standing. The full treatment of this rule is on the Rules page.

One floor, no exceptions

There is one SSOL minimum wage per employer location, calculated the same way for every worker. There is no part-time rate. There is no tipped rate. There is no gig-worker carve-out. The classification of a job as part-time, tip-eligible, or contract does not change the hourly floor that applies to the hours worked.

Gig work follows the same logic. Hours worked on a gig platform count toward the 2,000-hour standard. The platform pays SSOL for those hours. If a worker cobbles together 2,000 hours across four gig platforms and one part-time employer, each entity pays SSOL for the hours they consumed. The worker's annual earnings reach the floor. The 2,000-hour standard is met regardless of how the hours were assembled.