Anyone who is getting paid more than the effective local minimum wage will see adjustments if they get moved to or from exempt. Will some businesses try to take advantage of this? Certainly. Is the economy weak enough that they will be able to abuse their employees? I think it depends on the locale.

Going forward, we need a much simpler set of rules, possibly as simple as "no more than 10% of any business's employees can be exempt." We also need to make a real penalty for abusing the system. Maybe the employer should have to pay triple damages -- 2 for the victimized employee and one for the lawyers.