President Barack Obama has directed the Department of Labor to raise the pay threshold at which full-time salaried worker must receive overtime. This unwarranted interference in the workplace will encroach on the rights of businesses, reduce flexibility in worker's schedules and limit job opportunities. What it's not likely to do is raise household incomes, which have stagnated under the administration's economic policies.

In a blog post on Huffington Post late last month, Obama pitched the change in rules as a way to ensure white collar middle class workers get paid more for extra work — "a hard day's work deserves a fair day's pay," he wrote.

Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, a full-time salaried worker becomes exempt from overtime pay once his or her earnings reach $23,660 a year. That amount was last updated in 2004. Obama wants to more than double the threshold to $50,440 a year in 2016. He also proposes automatically raising that cap with income inflation.

The president predicts the changes will help five million full-time salaried workers.

But Jared Bernstein, Vice President Joe Biden's former chief economist, says extending overtime pay to more workers won't actually increase their pay. In a paper he co-authored in 2014, Bernstein suggests the increased costs incurred by companies having to pay more overtime would ultimately be borne by workers.

James Sherk, a research fellow of labor economics at the Heritage Foundation agrees with Bernstein. He believes Obama is creating "false expectations."

"Despite that analysis that there won't be a boost in wages, they're saying there will be a boost in wages," he says.

Companies cutting pay to compensate for having to cover overtime is not unprecedented. After losing a lawsuit in 2006, IBM shifted thousands of salaried workers to hourly-based pay and cut base wages 15 percent to account for increases in overtime pay.

The overtime rules change will also negatively affect workers by restricting their flexibility.

Currently, salaried workers making above the overtime threshold can negotiate with their employers how many hours they spend on the job, and where they do the work. Obama's proposed changes would take away that scheduling flexibility.

"Firms are getting more skittish about flexible work schedules," Sherk says, explaining employers would be legally bound to track every hour worked, making telecommuting a trickier option.

The Family Friendly and Workplace Flexibility Act proposed in 2013 by now-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is a viable alternative. The proposal would allow employers to give workers the option to receive one and a half hours of compensatory time off instead of pay for every hour of overtime worked.

Technology has radically reshaped the workplace. Fewer employees are required to sit at desks in an office all day. Those workers and their employers should have the freedom to structure a compensation system that makes sense for both.

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