US employers are facing a fast-changing labour law backdrop as federal agencies accelerate efforts to enact the Trump administration’s policy agenda, according to a Littler report.
The 2026 Labor Day Report – now in its ninth edition – highlighted 10 key trends impacting US employers, chief among them two proposed new rules from the US Department of Labor related to regulating independent contractor status and joint-employment standards under federal wage-and-hour laws.
The two proposals more or less follow the approach set out at the end of the first Trump administration that were effectively quashed by the Biden administration.
Independent contractor status would be determined by a two-factor test – whether an employer has a right of control over a worker and whether a worker has an opportunity to realise a profit (or loss). The joint-employment rule seeks to establish if an employee works for two or more employers where the employers are ‘sufficiently associated’ with each other that they would be classified ‘joint employers’.
The DOL also repealed a Biden-era rule that would have increased the minimum salary necessary to qualify for the so-called ‘white-collar’ exemption where employers wouldn’t need to compensate executive, administrative or professional employees for working overtime, alongside other minimum wage and record-keeping exemptions.
Other key trends include the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) restoring a working quorum, enabling it to move forward aggressively to advance the Trump administration’s agenda in areas such as ‘illegal’ diversity programmes and the rights of religious employees in the workplace.
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has also restored a working quorum, which is likely to move forward with seeking to overturn a number of Biden-era precedents.
In a joint statement, Shannon Meade, Alex MacDonald and Jim Paretti from Littler’s Workplace Policy Institute said: “Employers have adjusted to a new normal in the second year of the second Trump administration, and there is more change on the horizon. With quorums reinstated at the NLRB and EEOC, and midterm elections poised to further shift the labour and employment law landscape, employers may have even more to contend with heading into 2027.”
Against that backdrop, employers are likely to continue seeing heightened enforcement of worksite immigration rules, with audits, inspections and raids likely in sectors such as manufacturing, hospitality, logistics, construction and healthcare.
Meanwhile, states are increasingly moving to regulate AI in the absence of federal action – despite Trump’s efforts to limit state AI regulation – ranging from requirements for certain types of AI tools to comprehensive regulatory schemes such as in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois and Texas.
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