Overtime is a weekly question, and almost everyone asks it daily
The Fair Labor Standards Act requires one and a half times the regular rate for hours worked over 40 in a workweek. That is the whole federal trigger. There is no federal overtime for long days, for weekends, for nights, or for holidays.
The consequence surprises people every week. Four 10-hour days is 40 hours: no overtime. A 12-hour Saturday in a week that totals 38 hours: no overtime. Two 16-hour shifts and three days off: 32 hours, no overtime. Meanwhile five 8.5-hour days — which feel unremarkable — total 42.5 and produce 2.5 overtime hours.
Time and a half for weekends and holidays is real, but it comes from employer policy or a collective bargaining agreement, not from the FLSA. If your employer pays it, it is a benefit they chose. If they stop, the law does not step in — unless the hours pushed the week past 40.
The regular rate is not the number on your offer letter
Overtime is a multiple of the regular rate, defined as total remuneration for the workweek divided by total hours worked. For someone paid a flat hourly wage and nothing else, that equals the hourly wage and nobody notices the distinction. Add anything else and it stops being equal.
These have to be included in the regular rate before the multiplier is applied:
- Nondiscretionary bonuses — attendance, production, safety, or any bonus announced in advance to encourage a behaviour. If employees could predict it, it counts.
- Shift differentials — the extra for nights or weekends.
- Most commissions, whether paid weekly or spread over a longer period and then allocated back.
- On-call pay and hazard pay, in most arrangements.
These may be excluded: genuinely discretionary bonuses decided after the fact, gifts, reimbursed expenses, premium pay already paid at 1.5× for weekend or holiday work, and most benefit contributions.
The arithmetic is worth seeing once. Take $20 an hour, 45 hours worked, and a $90 production bonus for the week. Straight-time pay is $900 plus the $90 bonus, so the regular rate is $990 ÷ 45 = $22. The five overtime hours have already been paid at straight time inside that $990, so what remains is the half-time premium: 5 × $22 × 0.5 = $55. The correct total is $1,045. An employer applying 1.5 × $20 to five hours and adding the bonus separately arrives at $1,040 — five dollars short, every week, on one employee.
Exempt is a three-part test, not a job title
A large share of the people searching for an overtime calculator do not need arithmetic. They need to know whether they are owed anything at all. Exempt employees are owed no overtime no matter how many hours they work, and the boundary is defined by three conditions that must all be met.
| Test | What it requires |
|---|---|
| Salary basis | A predetermined amount each pay period that does not shrink because of the quantity or quality of work performed. |
| Salary level | At least $684 a week ($35,568 a year) under the federal floor, with a separate highly compensated employee route at $107,432 a year. |
| Duties | Primary duties that fit the executive, administrative, professional, computer or outside sales definitions — as actually performed, not as written in the job description. |
The salary level has been contested. A 2024 Department of Labor rule would have raised it to $1,128 a week, but a federal court in the Eastern District of Texas vacated that rule nationwide in November 2024, restoring the 2019 figure of $684. Several states set their own, higher floors — California ties its threshold to twice the state minimum wage for full-time work, and New York varies its threshold by region — and the higher number governs where it applies.
The duties test is where most misclassification lives. Calling someone an "assistant manager" does not make them exempt if they spend the shift stocking shelves and running a register. Paying someone a salary does not make them exempt either; it only satisfies one of the three conditions.
The states that go further than federal law
The FLSA is a floor, and several states have built above it. California is the one worth knowing in detail because its rules are daily as well as weekly.
- California — 1.5× past 8 hours in a day and past 40 in a week; 2× past 12 hours in a day; on the seventh consecutive day of a workweek, 1.5× for the first 8 hours and 2× beyond that.
- Alaska, Nevada — daily overtime past 8 hours, with conditions.
- Colorado — past 12 hours in a day, or past 12 consecutive hours of work regardless of when the workday began.
- Puerto Rico — daily overtime with its own structure.
When a state has daily overtime, hours already counted as daily overtime are not counted again toward the weekly 40-hour trigger. Double counting there inflates the paycheck on paper and is a common spreadsheet error. Switch the calculator above to the California rule and the same four 10-hour days that produce nothing federally produce seven hours of daily overtime.
Your workweek is a fixed 168 hours, and it matters
A workweek is any fixed, regularly recurring period of seven consecutive 24-hour days. The employer chooses when it starts, but once chosen it must stay put; it cannot be moved around to dodge a threshold. It also does not have to match the pay period. An employer paying every two weeks still owes overtime week by week, and cannot average 50 hours and 30 hours into two tidy 40s.
The boundary itself has consequences. If the workweek runs Sunday to Saturday, a Saturday night shift that ends at 2am on Sunday splits across two workweeks, and the hours fall on either side of two separate 40-hour thresholds. Nothing is lost — but the week that gets the tail may cross 40 while the other does not, and a stub that appears to short you may in fact be correct. Ask which day your workweek starts before assuming an error; employers are required to have a fixed answer.
Hours worked means all time the employee is suffered or permitted to work — including work performed off the clock with the employer's knowledge, short rest breaks under 20 minutes, and required travel between job sites during the day. Ordinary commuting does not count, and a bona fide meal break of 30 minutes or more, entirely free from duty, does not count.
Where overtime pay quietly goes wrong
- Bonuses left out of the regular rate. The most common underpayment, and it compounds silently across every overtime hour in the period.
- Two pay rates, one average. An employee working two jobs at different rates for the same employer has a regular rate that is the weighted average of both, unless a specific written agreement provides otherwise.
- Unpaid pre-shift and post-shift work. Booting a terminal, counting a till, donning required gear. Fifteen minutes a day is 1.25 hours a week, which is often exactly the amount that crosses 40.
- Comp time in a private company. Time off in place of overtime money is not lawful for private employers, however much both sides prefer it.
- Paid leave counted as hours worked. Holiday, vacation and sick hours are usually not hours worked for the 40-hour trigger, so a week with 8 hours of holiday and 36 hours worked is 44 paid hours and zero overtime hours.
What this calculator can and cannot see
It applies the federal weekly rule, optionally the California daily rules, and it builds the regular rate from the pay you enter, including other weekly pay that belongs in it. It shows the premium separately from straight time so the number can be checked against a pay stub line by line.
It does not know your state's own thresholds beyond California, your union contract, your employer's chosen workweek, or the exclusions your particular bonus may qualify for. It produces gross pay before taxes, garnishments and deductions. Treat it as an arithmetic check on what you were paid, and take a genuine dispute to your state labor agency or the federal Wage and Hour Division, both of which investigate unpaid overtime without charge.
Privacy
Every calculation happens in your browser. Your wage, your hours and your bonus are never uploaded, never logged and never stored, and there is no account. That matters more here than on most tools: what you type is evidence about your own employment.
Frequently asked questions
Do I get overtime for working more than 8 hours in a day?
Under federal law, no. The Fair Labor Standards Act counts hours in a workweek, not in a day. If you work four 10-hour days and then stop, that is 40 hours and no overtime is owed, even though every one of those days was long. Some states do impose daily overtime — California pays 1.5× past 8 hours in a day and 2× past 12 — and a union contract can require it anywhere. But absent a state rule or a contract, the 40-hour weekly total is the only trigger.
Is my overtime calculated on my hourly rate?
Not exactly. It is calculated on your regular rate, which is your total pay for the week divided by the hours you worked. Nondiscretionary bonuses, shift differentials, production bonuses and most commissions have to be folded in first. Someone earning $20 an hour who also received a $90 attendance bonus in a 45-hour week has a regular rate of $22, not $20, and the overtime premium is calculated on $22. Employers who use the base rate underpay every affected hour.
Can my employer average two weeks together to avoid overtime?
No. Each workweek stands alone. A 50-hour week followed by a 30-hour week is 10 hours of overtime plus a short week, not two 40-hour weeks. The only common exception is for certain hospital and residential care employees under the FLSA's 8-and-80 rule, and for some public safety and firefighting schedules, all of which require specific agreements.
Can I take comp time instead of overtime pay?
In the private sector, generally not. The FLSA requires overtime to be paid in money, in the pay period in which it was earned. Paid time off given in place of that money is not lawful for private employers, even if the employee prefers it. Public agencies are the exception: state and local government employers may give compensatory time at 1.5 hours per overtime hour, capped at 240 hours for most employees and 480 for public safety and emergency response.
Does being paid a salary mean I am exempt from overtime?
No, and this is the most expensive misunderstanding in the subject. A salary is a payment method; exempt is a legal status with three separate requirements — the salary basis, a salary at or above the federal floor of $684 a week, and job duties that genuinely fit the executive, administrative, professional, computer or outside sales tests. Fail any one and the employee is non-exempt and owed overtime, whatever the job title says.