The Trump administration’s latest regulatory agenda offers HR leaders an early look at potential changes to workplace rules, including independent contractor classification, joint employer standards and the H-1B visa program. While the agenda itself does not change legal obligations, it signals where federal agencies such as the Department of Labor (DOL), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) are likely to focus rulemaking and enforcement through the remainder of 2026.
“For businesses, the agenda is less a final scorecard than an early playbook,” said Troy Lyons, senior director of federal affairs at Holland & Hart, based in Washington, D.C. Although regulatory deadlines “are rarely met,” Lyons noted they remain valuable for understanding the likely sequence of agency actions.
Lyons said that the DOL plans to emphasize compliance assistance, opinion letters, self-audit tools, and targeted enforcement. Employers that assess their compliance exposure and engage early in the regulatory process will be better positioned as proposals evolve into agency action, he said.
“Overall, the regulatory agenda, along with the appointment of Keith Sonderling as Labor Secretary, suggests a business-friendly environment focused on economic opportunity and compliance assistance rather than aggressive enforcement,” said Kathleen Caminiti, an attorney and co-chair of the Wage and Hour Practice Group at Fisher Phillips in New Jersey and New York.
Wage and Hour Division
The DOL’s Wage and Hour Division (WHD), charged with enforcing federal labor laws related to minimum wage, overtime pay, family leave, and child labor, unveiled newly announced plans for teen workers and tip credits and provided updated time frames on proposals related to independent contractors and joint employers.
The WHD set October for a final version of its proposed rule rescinding the Biden administration’s independent contractor regulation, moving from a totality-of-the-circumstances approach back to a “Core Factors” test, with economic dependence as the central inquiry.
Under the proposed rule, two primary factors carry the most weight in the classification analysis: the nature and degree of control over the work, and the individual’s opportunity for profit or loss.
SHRM is broadly supportive of the proposal to revise how organizations determine whether a worker is an employee or an independent contractor under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). But in its comment submitted during the rule’s public comment period, SHRM also urged the agency to make several targeted changes to ensure the final regulation is practical for organizations to apply.
The WHD also confirmed it plans to interpret joint employment standards under the FLSA. A proposal was issued in April but there is no timeline for a final rule. Since 2021, the WHD has had no regulatory guidance addressing joint employer liability under the FLSA.
New wage-and-hour regulatory efforts were announced, including a proposal scheduled for August aimed at addressing tip credits against the FLSA’s minimum wage requirements and another scheduled for September amending child labor standards permitting 14- and 15-year-old workers to take on more work hours.
Occupational Safety and Health Administration
The Trump administration’s 2026 regulatory agenda includes 30 proposals from the DOL’s main safety agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).
December is scheduled for the publication of a supplemental notice of proposed rulemaking for its long-anticipated heat rule. A final version is expected in 2027.
A supplemental notice is issued if a proposed rule has been substantially changed from the original notice or if considerable time has elapsed since the original notice was published.
The agency initially published a proposed rule on heat illness and injury prevention in August 2024. It is likely that OSHA is planning significant revisions to the proposed rule issued during the Biden administration.
Employee Benefits Security Administration
The Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) is responsible for promoting and protecting retirement, health, and other workplace benefits.
Employee benefits rulemaking is expected to address alternative assets in 401(k) plans, health care transparency, drug pricing, and fiduciary duties.
One rule scheduled for July will determine how much freedom fiduciaries have to consider environmental, social and governance factors and other nonfinancial factors when making investment selections. Another entering into the final rulemaking phase would create a fiduciary road map for selecting any investment options for a defined contribution plan, including any that included alternative assets, such as private equity or private credit.
The agency published earlier this year the details of its proposal aimed at making it easier to include nontraditional investments like private equity and cryptocurrency in workers’ retirement plans. A final rule is expected by the end of the year.
EBSA will also continue working on mental health parity requirements, scheduling a proposed rule in December clarifying plans’ and issuers’ obligations, promoting compliance, and reducing burden under the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act.
Another final rule scheduled for July aims to improve the standardization, accuracy, and accessibility of public pricing disclosures and increase access to pricing information for participants, beneficiaries, and enrollees.
Employment and Training Administration
On the employment-immigration front, the DOL’s Employment and Training Administration (ETA) plans to finalize the interim final rule concerning the H-2A temporary agricultural work program wage methodology that has been in place since October 2025.
ETA is also planning to finalize a regulation on H-2B wage methodology, slated for February 2027.
The agency also intends to finalize a rule that would revise the prevailing wage levels under the four-tiered DOL wage structure applicable to the H-1B and PERM programs. In March, the administration proposed a regulation to raise prevailing wage minimums for these programs, increasing the threshold for entry-level wages from the 17th percentile to the 34th percentile. As a result, employers would see higher sponsorship costs for both temporary work visa filings and most permanent residence cases. The 2026 regulatory agenda does not provide an anticipated date for release of the final rule.
This month, the ETA plans to issue a proposed rule overhauling the labor market test businesses must clear before they can sponsor a foreign worker for a green card. The PERM process has come under scrutiny from the government.
“PERM has not been comprehensively revised since 2004, and the required recruitment methods, including two Sunday newspaper ads and a state workforce agency posting, reflect a hiring market that no longer exists,” said Emily Neumann, managing partner at Reddy Neumann Brown in Houston. “The open question is whether the coming rule brings clarity or simply adds another layer to an already slow system,” she said. “While we wait, does your PERM recruitment look like ordinary hiring today? That alignment may be your best protection against both an audit and a discrimination charge.”
Immigration and Customs Enforcement
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), an agency under the DHS, has targeted international students in a pair of upcoming rules.
A final regulation is expected imminently that will end the longstanding practice of admitting foreign students and exchange visitors to the United States for the duration of their program, instead admitting individuals in these categories with a fixed expiration date, after which they will be required to file an extension in order to remain in the U.S.
As a designated J-1 visa sponsor for research scholars, short-term scholars, specialists, interns, and trainees, SHRM understands the value of the exchange programs, which support professional and career development while helping organizations across the U.S. access global talent.
SHRM urges ICE to provide clear, timely guidance on extension of stay procedures, including specific timelines, associated costs, and compliance expectations. “To reduce disruption, we strongly encourage the agencies to establish the longest possible compliance window before implementation and to consider phased approaches that allow sponsors and participants to adapt incrementally,” SHRM said. “Such measures would help ensure program continuity and prevent unintended interruptions in research, education, and training initiatives.”
ICE has also set a proposed regulation for February 2027 seeking to limit practical training programs for international students. Proposals could include restrictions on F-1 optional practical training (OPT), STEM extensions of OPT, and curricular practical training.
The proposal comes in the wake of increased fraud enforcement aimed at these student work programs. ICE recently identified over 10,000 foreign students using “suspect employers” to illegally maintain their F-1 visa status. Federal investigators discovered “ghost companies” and shell organizations offering fake jobs to help graduates stay in the U.S. without legitimate training or supervision.
“The fraud ICE described is real,” Neumann said. “But most companies hiring F-1 students do none of this. They are also the companies that will absorb the collateral consequences of an enforcement push of this size — more frequent site visits, sharper RFEs on H-1B and I-140 petitions, and reputational exposure any time their name appears in the same records as a flagged entity.”
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
Another DHS agency, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has set a proposed regulation for publication in August that would seek to revise the eligibility criteria for exemptions from the H-1B cap, impose additional requirements on third-party placement of H-1B employees, and impose an additional level of scrutiny on employers deemed to have violated H-1B program requirements.
A regulation expected this month will finalize an interim regulation in place since October 2025 that eliminated the maximum 540-day automatic extension of employment authorization documents (EAD) for certain foreign nationals who timely filed EAD renewal applications on or after October 30, 2025.
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) released its plans for the coming year, including goals to rescind long-standing guidelines on employer hiring tests and other selection procedures.
“The EEOC has proposed rescission of several interpretive guidance documents that have been part of the federal employment-law landscape since the late 1970s and early 1980s,” said Annette Tyman, an attorney in the Chicago office of Seyfarth. “A common theme throughout the agenda entries is the EEOC’s view that these materials have been overtaken by subsequent statutory amendments, judicial decisions, or other legal developments and no longer provide useful guidance to employers.”
On July 6, the agency rescinded its affirmative action guidelines, in place since 1979, regarding how private employers may implement affirmative action strategies without violating federal anti-discrimination law.
The EEOC plans to shortly revoke national origin discrimination guidelines, saying that the 1980 rule incorrectly presumes that employers’ English-only policies violate Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
The agency also plans to repeal the 1979 Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures by November. The guidelines provide the EEOC’s longstanding framework for evaluating employment tests and other selection procedures, including how employers assess adverse impact and validate selection methods used in hiring, promotion, and other employment decisions.
The rescission would be in line with the EEOC’s efforts to eliminate its use of disparate impact theory, which states that neutral policies can result in unintentional discrimination based on race, sex, and other protected categories.
Also, in November the agency plans to propose revisions to its rules implementing the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA). “The agency states that it intends to revise the regulations, including the language concerning the interpretation of the phrase ‘pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions,’ Tyman said. “Current EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas voted against the PWFA regulations when she was a commissioner.”
The commission also scheduled for July its proposed rule to eliminate employers’ annual EEO-1, EEO-2, EEO-3, EEO-4, and EEO-5 reports, ending the federal government’s decades-long practice of collecting workforce demographic data on race, ethnicity, and sex from covered employers.
“While recognizing a compliance requirement that has been in place for 60 years, the EEOC’s legal basis for rescinding the data collection compliance reports is that this requirement imposes a ‘significant financial and administrative burden’ on America’s employers,” Tyman said. “Once adopted, the proposal would eliminate the federal government’s most comprehensive source of demographic information concerning U.S. workforces.”
Employment attorneys reiterate that the EEOC’s rescissions only withdraw agency guidelines, and that Title VII, including its disparate-impact framework, remains in force and enforceable by private plaintiffs and state agencies.
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