New Mexico Wage & Hour Laws

New Mexico employers must pay employees on a semi-monthly basis, with some exceptions. Those employed in Administrative, Executive, Professional, Outside Sales, and Commission or Piece- or Day- Rate employees can be paid monthly if an employer so choses. A business cannot schedule their workers’ semi-monthly paydays more than 16 days apart.

A typical New Mexico workweek accounts to a 40-hour workweek over a standard of eight hours per day Monday-Friday. Any hours worked over the 40-hour standard qualifies as worked overtime. Overtime is calculated on a week-by-week basis and is to be paid at the rate of one and a half times the stated hourly rate. For any unpaid overtime wages, New Mexico state law allows workers to potentially recover up to three times the amount owed to them.

New Mexico state law does follow that employees cannot work more than 16 hours per any given day – unless in the case of certain emergencies.

The following types of workers are not covered by New Mexico law on minimum wage and overtime premium compensation:

an individual employed in domestic service in or about a private home;

an individual employed in a bona fide executive, administrative or professional capacity, including forepersons, superintendents and supervisors;

an individual employed by the United States, the state or any political subdivision of the state; provided, however, that for the purposes of Subsection A of Section 50-4-22 NMSA 1978, “employee” includes an individual employed by the state or any political subdivision of the state;

an individual engaged in the activities of an educational, charitable, religious or nonprofit organization where the employer-employee relationship does not, in fact, exist or where the services rendered to such organizations are on a voluntary basis. The employer-employee relationship shall not be deemed to exist with respect to an individual being served for purposes of rehabilitation by a charitable or nonprofit organization, notwithstanding the payment to the individual of a stipend based upon the value of the work performed by the individual;

salespersons or employees compensated upon piecework, flat rate schedules or commission basis;

students regularly enrolled in primary or secondary schools working

after school hours or on vacation;

registered apprentices and learners otherwise provided by law;

persons eighteen years of age or under who are not students in a primary, secondary, vocational or training school;

persons eighteen years of age or under who are not graduates of a secondary school;

10. G.I. bill trainees while under training;

11. seasonal employees of an employer obtaining and holding a valid certificate issued annually by the director of the labor relations division of the workforce solutions department. The certificate shall state the job designations and total number of employees to be exempted. In approving or disapproving an application for a certificate of exemption, the director shall consider the following:

whether such employment shall be at an educational, charitable or religious youth camp or retreat;

that such employment will be of a temporary nature;

that the individual will be furnished room and board in connection with such employment, or if the camp or retreat is a day camp or retreat, the individual will be furnished board in connection with such employment;

the purposes for which the camp or retreat is operated;

the job classifications for the positions to be exempted; and

any other factors that the director deems necessary to consider;

12. any employee employed in agriculture:

if the employee is employed by an employer who did not, during any calendar quarter during the preceding calendar year, use more than five hundred man-days of agricultural labor;

if the employee is the parent, spouse, child or other member of the employer’s immediate family; for the purpose of this subsection, the employer shall include the principal stockholder of a family corporation;

if the employee:

 is employed as a hand-harvest laborer and is paid on a piece-rate basis in an operation that has been, and is customarily and generally recognized as having been, paid on a piece-rate basis in the region of employment;

commutes daily from the employee’s permanent residence to the farm on which the employee is so employed; and

has been employed in agriculture less than thirteen weeks during the preceding calendar year;

if the employee, other than an employee described in Subparagraph (c) of this paragraph:

is sixteen years of age or under and is employed as a hand-harvest laborer, is paid on a piece-rate basis in an operation that has been, and is generally recognized as having been, paid on a piece-rate basis in the region of employment;

is employed on the same farm as the employee’s parent or person standing in the place of the parent; and

is paid at the same piece-rate as employees over age sixteen are paid on the same farm; or

if the employee is principally engaged in the range production of livestock or in milk production;

13. an employee engaged in the handling, drying, packing, packaging, processing, freezing or canning of any agricultural or horticultural commodity in its unmanufactured state; or

14. Employees of charitable, religious or nonprofit organizations who reside on the premises of group homes operated by such charitable, religious or nonprofit organizations for persons who have a mental, emotional or developmental disability.

Unlike federal overtime law, the New Mexico Minimum Wage Act does not have an exemption for employees who work for certain motor carriers — this includes interstate commerce drivers who operate vehicles over 10,000 lbs GVWR. This means that certain truck drivers in New Mexico may be entitled to overtime pay, despite being exempt from overtime pay under federal law.

An employee should be paid for breaks of 30 minutes or less in New Mexico. Breaks of 30 minutes or more may be unpaid so long as the employee is not required to do any work.

Additional pay for work done on weekends or holidays is not mandated under New Mexico law. Likewise, it is the employer’s choice whether or not to provide paid time off for holidays, vacation time and sick leave. However, workers within the state are entitled to two hours of paid time off to go vote on Election Day.

New Mexico wage law implies that any breaks allowed by the employer less than thirty minutes must be treated as working time for which the employee must be paid. Under federal law, breaks of thirty minutes or more do not require pay, as long as the employee is relieved fully of his or her duties.

If an employee reports to work for a shift of a certain number of hours but does not get to work their entire shift, neither New Mexico nor the Federal law requires the employee to be paid for the entire shift.

New Mexico’s statute of limitations for overtime claims is three years. Federal claims allow employees to recover wages for a two or three year period from when the lawsuit was filed.

Failure by employers to pay earned wages can hold both civil and criminal consequences under New Mexico law. Unlawfully withheld wages are liable to be paid back up to triple the amount owed, plus miscellaneous costs and attorney’s fees. Employers can also face misdemeanor charges for failure to pay wages.

Retaliation in the form of demotions, discharge, denied promotion, discrimination, or any other form is strictly prohibited by New Mexico law in cases where employees are seeking claims for the repayment of owed wages.

The New Mexico Day Laborers Act helps persons of the New Mexico day labor pool to be connected to third-party employers through their laborer service agencies.  Laborers are entitled fully to their payments through cash, check, money order, or other payment instruments. Employers may be liable to day laborers for unpaid wages in an amount up to three times the amount of any unpaid wages, plus miscellaneous costs and attorney’s fees.