In Arkansas, the minimum wage is set at $11 per hour. This requirement applies to employers with at least four employees. The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which has a lower federal minimum wage, also covers employers with four or more employees. When state and federal minimum wage rates differ, the higher rate prevails.

The 2019 legislation, HB 1751, amended the Arkansas Minimum Wage Act to allow employers, under certain conditions, to take a credit against the minimum wage for the value of board, lodging, apparel, or other items and services provided to employees.

Since 2017, political subdivisions in Arkansas have been barred from mandating that employers pay a minimum wage higher than the federal or state minimum wage rates.

Required posters:

• Minimum Wage
• Workers' Compensation
• Unemployment Insurance

Employers must pay overtime to employees for all hours worked beyond 40 hours in a workweek at a rate of one-and-a-half times the regular pay.

Here are the exemptions from Arkansas overtime requirements:

• Executive, administrative, or professional employees and outside commission-paid salespeople who typically work away from the employer’s premises.
• Students performing services for the school, college, or university they attend and are regularly enrolled in classes.
• Individuals employed by the U.S. government.
• Individuals engaged in activities for educational, charitable, religious, or nonprofit organizations where there is no employer-employee relationship or where services are rendered gratuitously.
• Independent contractors.
• Agricultural employees working for employers who did not use more than 500 man-days of agricultural labor in any calendar quarter of the preceding year.
• Immediate family members of an agricultural employer.
• Hand-harvest laborers paid on a piece-rate basis, commuting daily from their permanent residence, and employed in agriculture for fewer than 13 weeks in the preceding year.
• Migrant workers under 16 years old, paid on a piece-rate basis, working on the same farm as their parents, and paid the same piece-rate as employees over 16.
• Employees in the range production of livestock.
• Forestry employees involved in planting, tending, or transporting logs or other forestry products, if the employer has no more than eight employees in forestry operations.
• Employees of nonprofit recreational or educational camps operating for no more than seven months in a calendar year.
• Houseparents at nonprofit child welfare agencies, directly caring for children in residential facilities, compensated at an annual rate of at least $13,000 or $10,000 if provided with board and lodging.
• Employees of small newspapers with a circulation of less than 4,000, primarily within the county of publication or contiguous counties.
• Domestic service employees providing babysitting or companionship services for individuals unable to care for themselves due to age or infirmity.
• Newspaper delivery employees.
• Home workers engaged in making wreaths primarily from natural holly, pine, cedar, or other evergreens (including harvesting these evergreens or other forest products) is exempt.

Additionally, certain employers, such as police and fire departments, hospitals, and residential care facilities, may have special overtime provisions.

Employers must retain the following information for each employee:

• Full name as used for Social Security recordkeeping, along with any identifying symbol or number used in place of the name on time, work, or payroll records
• Home address, including zip code
• Date of birth, if under age 19
• Sex and occupation
• Time of day and day of week when the employee’s workweek begins (a single notation suffices if the entire workforce has the same start time)
• Regular hourly rate of pay for any workweek with overtime compensation, and the basis on which wages are paid (e.g., per hour, per day, per week, per piece, or commission rate)
• Hours worked each workday and total hours worked each workweek
• Total daily or weekly straight-time earnings or wages for hours worked, excluding overtime compensation
• Total overtime compensation, with some exclusions
• Total additions to or deductions from wages paid each pay period, along with the nature of these additions or deductions
• Total wages paid each pay period
• Date of payment and the pay period covered by the payment

For employees on fixed schedules, employers may keep records showing the schedule of daily and weekly hours and a statement or other recordkeeping method indicating that these hours were actually worked. If more or fewer hours than scheduled are worked, the exact number of hours worked each day and week must be recorded.

Records must be kept for three years.