How this is worked out
The Fair Labor Standards Act is a weekly rule and only a weekly rule: time and a half for hours over 40 in a workweek. There is no federal daily overtime, and no federal premium for working a Saturday, a Sunday or a holiday as such.
That surprises people, and the clearest demonstration is a compressed week. Four ten-hour days is forty hours. Under federal law that is zero overtime. Move the same four days to California and it is eight hours of overtime, because California pays time and a half for everything over eight hours in a day regardless of the weekly total.
California is the big one, and it has three layers: 1.5× over 8 hours in a day, 2× over 12 hours in a day, 1.5× over 40 in a week, and on a seventh consecutive workday the first 8 hours are 1.5× and everything beyond is double time.
Alaska adds a straightforward daily rule at 8 hours. Colorado pays whichever of its three tests gives the most — over 40 a week, over 12 in a day, or 12 consecutive hours. Nevada's daily rule applies only to employees paid under $18.00 an hour, so the rate has to be known before the rule can be chosen.
An end time earlier than a start time is read as an overnight shift, not as a typo. That is not a nicety: it is the single most common failure in timesheet software, and it fails for exactly the people working nights.
A worked example
- Rule
- Federal (FLSA) — most states
- Week entered
- Monday to Friday, 08:00–18:00, one hour for lunch
- Hours a day
- 9:00
- Total for the week
- 45:00
- Ordinary hours
- 40:00
- Overtime hours
- 5:00 at 1.5×
- Hourly rate
- $22.00
- Gross for the week
- $1,045.00
- Effective rate across every hour
- $23.22
- The same week in California
- still 5 hours — no day passes 8 hours by enough to change it
The compressed-week trap
Four ten-hour days sounds like a favour — a three-day weekend for the same forty hours. Under federal law it is exactly that, and it costs the employer nothing, because forty hours is forty hours and the FLSA does not care how they were arranged.
In California the same schedule costs eight hours of overtime, because the daily rule bites twice a day for four days. Employers there use formal alternative workweek schedules, adopted by a two-thirds vote of the affected employees, precisely to make four tens lawful without the premium.
This is why the state selector is the first control on the page rather than a footnote. Getting it wrong does not produce a slightly different number; on a compressed schedule it produces a completely different one.
The regular rate is not always your hourly rate
The FLSA computes overtime on the "regular rate of pay", which is not necessarily the number on your offer letter. Non-discretionary bonuses, shift differentials, commissions and most production bonuses must be folded into it before the multiplier is applied.
A worked example: forty-five hours at $20 with a $100 attendance bonus. The regular rate is not $20, it is ($900 + $100) ÷ 45 = $22.22, and the overtime premium is calculated on that. Employers get this wrong routinely, and it is one of the more common bases for a back-pay claim.
This calculator uses the rate you enter, so if your pay includes a non-discretionary bonus, work out your regular rate first and enter that. Discretionary gifts, genuine profit-sharing and paid time off are excluded.
Salaried does not mean exempt
Being paid a salary does not remove your right to overtime. Exemption requires meeting a salary threshold and a duties test — executive, administrative, professional, outside sales or certain computer roles — and the duties test is about what you actually do, not what your job title says.
Misclassification is widespread, particularly for junior "managers" whose real work is the same as the people they nominally supervise, and for administrative staff whose duties do not involve the exercise of discretion and independent judgment on matters of significance.
If you are salaried and unsure, the duties test is worth reading properly. The Department of Labor publishes fact sheets on each exemption, and the outcome is worth real money — an exempt classification removes overtime entirely.
Keep your own record
Your employer is required to keep accurate time records, and in a dispute the burden shifts to them if those records are missing or unreliable. But "the employer failed to keep records" is a much weaker position than "here is my own contemporaneous log".
A record written at the time carries far more weight than one reconstructed afterwards. Note the start, the finish, and the breaks actually taken rather than the ones scheduled — an unpaid lunch you worked through is compensable time, and so is a meal break interrupted for work.
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Assumptions and sources
- US federal
- US Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/overtime
- California
- California Department of Industrial Relations, overtime FAQ. https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/faq_overtime.htm
- Alaska
- Alaska Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Act. https://labor.alaska.gov/lss/whact.htm
- Colorado
- Colorado Department of Labor and Employment. https://cdle.colorado.gov/dlss-home-page/wage-and-hour-law/overtime
- Nevada
- Nevada Office of the Labor Commissioner, daily overtime bulletin. https://labor.nv.gov/
- Regular rate
- Overtime is computed on the FLSA "regular rate of pay", which includes non-discretionary bonuses and shift differentials. This tool uses the rate you enter. checked 2026-08
- Not covered
- State rules beyond the five above, industry-specific daily rules, alternative workweek schedules, and collective bargaining agreements that set better terms.