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Takeaways
- Incoming Wage and Hour Administrator Andrew Rogers will head the DOL division that enforces the FLSA and other key employment statutes.
- Jonathan Berry, DOL's incoming solicitor of labor, drafted Project 2025's chapter on the DOL and proposed DOL policy positions.
- The confirmations of Rogers and Berry were part of a broad slate of nominees, including nominees for other key DOL posts, that cleared the Senate.
Related links
- DOL Proposes to Decodify 450+ FLSA Interpretive Guidance: What Does It Mean for Employers?
- Final Touches: President Trump Rounds Out DOL Leadership with Two Nominees
Article
The Senate has confirmed President Donald Trump's nominees for two key posts at the Department of Labor. Wage and hour administrator nominee Andrew Rogers and solicitor of labor nominee Jonathan Berry cleared the Senate.
Their confirmations were part of a large slate of nominees approved by the Senate by a 51-47 vote on Oct. 7, 2025, including nominees for other high-ranking positions at the DOL's other sub-agencies. With their confirmation, the Trump DOL's full leadership slate is in place.
Andrew Rogers as Wage and Hour Administrator
Andrew Rogers had practiced employment law at a management-side firm. He takes the Wage and Hour Division (WHD) helm with significant administrative agency experience, however, most recently as acting general counsel at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). He was a senior advisor in the WHD during the first Trump Administration, where he focused primarily on regulations and opinion letters.
During the first Trump Administration, the DOL had a robust practice of publishing opinion letters, which are useful guidance directives for employers. Opinion letters dropped off considerably during the Biden Administration, which issued only three. In June 2025, the agency announced it would ramp up its opinion letter program anew. Rogers will now drive this initiative as administrator.
The wage and hour administrator is a key leadership post at the DOL. The WHD enforces the federal minimum wage, overtime pay, recordkeeping, and child labor requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act, as well as other employment standards and worker protections under other statutes, including the Family and Medical Leave Act. The position is often the subject of a contentious nomination battle, typically eliciting significant opposition from outside advocacy groups from the other side of the worker-management divide.
The last wage and hour administrator, Jessica Looman, faced stiff resistance in confirmation proceedings. Looman led the Biden WHD for several years in a "principal agency administrator" role before her nomination finally cleared the Senate in Oct. 2023. In contrast, the Trump DOL has had a succession of two temporary wage and hour administrators filling in while Rogers' nomination was pending. Rogers' passage through the Senate HELP committee and the full Senate was comparatively swift.
Jonathan Berry as Solicitor of Labor
The Senate also confirmed Jonathan Berry as solicitor of labor, the DOL's chief lawyer. Berry is managing partner at a Washington firm with a significant U.S. Supreme Court and administrative law practice. He served in the first Trump Administration as DOL acting and principal deputy assistant secretary for policy, where he oversaw agency rulemaking.
Berry authored the "Department of Labor and Related Agencies" chapter in the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 policy document. (See Final Touches: President Trump Rounds Out DOL Leadership with Two Nominees.) While the labor solicitor is not a policy position, Berry likely has influenced some agency initiatives already.
For example, among its policy prescriptions, Project 2025 calls for DOL to restrict the use of sub-regulatory guidance documents. The DOL recently has taken steps in this direction, announcing its intent to remove subregulatory guidance from the Code of Federal Regulations and move them to the agency's internal field operations handbook.
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