Large chains already pay servers time and a half for over 40 hours. This may affect salaried middle management at many restaurant locations.
I suspect that smaller retail stores and restaurants will feel the brunt of this. It works out to about $12.50/hr.
In small town America, there are many jobs that this may impact.
I don’t want to get all “Mr. Pink” here but I have never agreed with the idea that a restaurant should underpay their wait staff and then expect for you to pay the wait staff for them and have your meal cost 15% more than they said it would. I quit going to a restaurant (that is now out of business) because they switched to table service instead of ordering at the counter. Basically they had just raised their prices by 15% and made me have to wait and hope for the server to see I needed a drink refill instead of being able to just go get it myself. But anyway..
If they are changing the wage you have to pay someone in order to call them salary instead of hourly, it makes sense that it would mostly affect people who manage fast food restaurants or retail establishment of a similar scope. If we go beyond the question of whether the government should be able to micromanage your business (the idea that they can has been around a lot longer than Obama) then I’m going to have to say that paying someone $27k to manage your restaurant and expecting him to work more than 40 hours and be there all the time does sound like a crappy deal.