August 29, 2025 Washington, DC — The nation’s leading association serving nonprofit and mission-driven providers of aging services, including agencies delivering home care, in comments submitted yesterday, urged the Department of Labor (DOL) to withdraw its proposed rule that would eliminate Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) minimum wage and overtime protections for home care workers and instead leverage recent Trump administration initiatives–including those focused on workforce development and apprenticeships–to positively impact the current home care workforce crisis.
Emphasizing that LeadingAge, like the DOL, is deeply concerned about the issues and challenges workers and employers in the home care sector navigate–and how these issues impact older adults’ ability to access needed care–in comments on the Application of the Fair Labor Standards Act to Domestic Service proposed rule, the association details its disagreement with DOL’s proposal to return to the 1975 rule permitting third-party employers to claim the ‘companion services’ exemption that exclude many home care workers from FLSA protections.
Calling the now-in-place 2013 Rule, which limits the companionship services exemption to workers who are performing only casual and intermittent services, the “more appropriate application” of law,” LeadingAge President and CEO Katie Smith Sloan explains that “for the current workforce employed by third-party employers of home care services, the work is not casual; it is a primary occupation.”
What’s more, federal statute and regulations have since 1989 required Medicare-certified home health agencies employing home health aides to comply with specific training and evaluation standards approved by their state. Also, for the second most common professionals in home care, personal care aides, the consistency of training requirements have expanded, and currently all but seven states have implemented training requirements. “This is because state governments and federal regulators recognize these individuals as trained professionals, not casual companions.”
To repeal the 2013 rule, Sloan said, would undermine efforts by her association and other advocates to improve and further professionalize home care jobs and would also by “devaluing home care work as that of casual, intermittent companions” further destabilize the workforce at a time when investment in it is needed.
Also taking issue with the DOL’s stated expectation that if adopted, the proposed rule would expand access to care, Sloan maintains that “working longer work hours, and/or receiving lower pay for those hours, could negatively impact the retention of home care workers and lead to increased employee turnover and difficulty attracting skilled workers to the sector.” Indeed, removing basic labor protections from home care workers will only exacerbate the multiple issues buffeting the home care sector, its workers and consumers: serious threats from cuts to federal Medicaid contributions, changing immigration policies, and the lack of realistic long-term services and supports (LTSS) options.
Given the significant challenges facing older adults and aging services–including an aging population and an insufficient pool of available workers to support their care needs, Sloan recommends the DOL rescind the proposed rule and also leverage recent Trump administration initiatives, including the creation of the Office of Immigration Policy (OIP) within the Department’s Office of the Secretary, and the Preparing Americans for High-Paying Skilled Trade Jobs of the Future executive order, drafted jointly by the departments of Labor, Commerce, and Education, to make positive change.
“Actions can and must be taken to recruit and retain these critical home care workers,” she writes, and “change the perception of these roles through investment.”
