As a salaried employee you must still be paid for overtime under law. I am salaried and am paid overtime all the time. It is also illegal to work more than 40 hrs a week without paid overtime and illegal to work more than 7 days without a day of rest.
There are many professions that are exempt from U.S. overtime laws. From the Department of Labor website, the exemptions include:
- Executive, administrative, and professional employees (including teachers and academic administrative personnel in elementary and secondary schools), outside sales employees, and certain skilled computer professionals.
- Employees of certain seasonal amusement or recreational establishments
- Employees of certain small newspapers and switchboard operators of small telephone companies
- Seamen employed on foreign vessels
- Employees engaged in fishing operations
- Employees engaged in newspaper delivery
- Farm workers employed on small farms (i.e., those that used less than 500 "man‑days" of farm labor in any calendar quarter of the preceding calendar year)
- Casual babysitters and persons employed as companions to the elderly or infirm
- Certain commissioned employees of retail or service establishments
- Auto, truck, trailer, farm implement, boat, or aircraft salespersons employed by non‑manufacturing establishments primarily engaged in selling these items to ultimate purchasers
- Auto, truck, or farm implement parts‑clerks and mechanics employed by non-manufacturing establishments primarily engaged in selling these items to ultimate purchasers
- Railroad and air carrier employees, taxi drivers, certain employees of motor carriers, seamen on American vessels, and local delivery employees paid on approved trip rate plans
- Announcers, news editors, and chief engineers of certain non‑metropolitan broadcasting stations
- Domestic service workers who reside in their employers' residences
- Employees of motion picture theaters
- Farmworkers
A computer professional making more than about $28 an hour is exempt, for example. That's pretty much every non-novice programmer these days.
And if they paid teachers overtime, every school district would be bankrupt pronto.