Have DOL limit timekeeping requirements for teleworking employees

What has happened

1. Jul 22, 2026 Partially done

   The Wage and Hour Division did limit a timekeeping requirement for teleworking employees, by opinion letter rather than by rule, and not by the mechanism the Quote names. Opinion Letter FLSA2026-9 of 2026-07-22 answers an employer whose non-exempt office staff were barred from splitting a workday between home and office because mid-day home-to-office travel might be compensable under the continuous-workday doctrine. The Administrator holds that it is not: "any time employees spend traveling between their home and their primary worksite within a workday may be excluded from recorded worktime, as long as such travel is otherwise a 'normal' or 'ordinary' commute that primarily benefits the employee", and the letter opens by saying that "an employer would not need to record such travel time as work". It goes further and declares ordinary home-to-work travel occurring during the workday "a third category of time during the workday, in addition to bona fide meal breaks and off-duty time, that is not considered 'hours worked'". A companion letter of the same date, FLSA2026-10, treats pages, scheduling calls and the drive from home to a first client appointment. `partial` and not `done`: the Quote asks that a teleworking employee "need only record time if the quantity of work assigned for that day exceeds the usual amount", so that neither side tracks logins and logouts, and the letter does the opposite of that on the general obligation — its footnote 23 reiterates that "the employer must keep an accurate record of all 'hours worked each workday and total hours worked each workweek,' 29 C.F.R. § 516.2(a)(7), which, depending on an employer's recordkeeping practices, could necessitate recording the length or timing of an excluded mid-day commute". One category of time was taken out of recorded worktime; the recordkeeping rule the Quote wants relaxed stands. No rule, and no Field Assistance Bulletin: the FAB series has four entries for 2025 (home care enforcement, liquidated damages in administrative settlements, H-2A enforcement, independent-contractor misclassification) and none for 2026.

   • WHD Opinion Letter FLSA2026-9 (2026-07-22): mid-day travel between a teleworking employee's home and work office is ordinary commuting, may be excluded from recorded worktime, and is a third category of non-hours-worked time during the workday

     Primary Executive branch Jul 22, 2026

   • WHD Opinion Letter FLSA2026-10 (2026-07-22): whether receiving pages, making scheduling calls and driving from home to a first client appointment is worktime an employer must record and pay for

     Primary Executive branch Jul 22, 2026

   • WHD Field Assistance Bulletins index as observed 2026-09-06 — four 2025 bulletins, none on telework timekeeping, and none issued in 2026. The page carries no date of its own, so it is dated at the observation and is approximate

     Primary Executive branch Sep 6, 2026