The federal rule takes one sentence: past 40 hours in a workweek, you're owed one-and-a-half times your regular rate. The paycheck math is easy. What trips people up are the three questions hiding inside that sentence — what counts as your "regular rate," whether salaried workers qualify at all, and which states quietly give you more than the feds do. Here's all of it, with numbers you can check against your own paystub.
Overtime premium is 1.5× your regular rate of pay — "time and a half" — for every hour beyond 40 in a single workweek. Some situations pay double time: hours past 12 in a day in California, and a few union contracts and state rules elsewhere. Your regular rate isn't necessarily your base wage, though; it's your total straight-time compensation for the week divided by your hours, which is where bonuses come in (more on that below).
One structural rule matters more than any multiplier: the workweek is fixed and standalone. A 45-hour week followed by a 35-hour week owes five overtime hours. Employers cannot average the two weeks, and the fact that you're paid biweekly changes nothing except which check the money lands on.
Worked examples at the federal 1.5× multiplier:
| Situation | Regular rate | Overtime rate | Weekly gross |
|---|---|---|---|
| $20/hr, 45-hour week | $20.00 | $30.00 | $950 |
| $22/hr, 47-hour week | $22.00 | $33.00 | $1,111 |
| $25/hr, 44-hour week | $25.00 | $37.50 | $1,150 |
| $30/hr, 60-hour week | $30.00 | $45.00 | $2,100 |
Check the first row: 40 hours at $20 is $800, plus 5 overtime hours at $30 is $150, so $950. If your paystub shows $925 for that week, someone paid the extra hours at straight time — the most common overtime violation there is. Run your own numbers through the overtime calculator to check any week in seconds.
Yes, if it's nondiscretionary — meaning promised, tied to output, or expected. Shift differentials and commissions count too. Example: you earn $20/hr, work 50 hours, and pick up a $100 production bonus. Straight-time pay is $1,100 (50 × $20 + $100), so your regular rate is $1,100 ÷ 50 = $22. Overtime is owed at $33 an hour, not $30. The employer can't compute the bonus into your check but skip the recalculation of the premium — that recompute is legally part of paying the bonus at all.
Often, yes — salary alone doesn't remove overtime rights. Only "exempt" employees are excluded, and exemption requires all three of: a salary basis, a salary above the legal floor, and duties that genuinely fit an executive, professional, or administrative role. Job titles prove nothing; a "manager" who mostly runs a register is non-exempt.
The federal salary floor is $684 a week ($35,568 a year), the level set in 2019 — a 2024 rule that would have nearly doubled it was struck down in court before taking full effect. States set their own, higher floors: California's exempt threshold for 2026 is $70,304 a year, since the state requires a salary of at least twice its $16.90 minimum wage. A $45,000 "assistant manager" in California is owed overtime automatically, whatever their duties.
For salaried non-exempt workers, the regular rate comes from dividing the salary by hours worked. Earning $1,040 a week over 45 hours makes the regular rate $23.11, and the overtime premium adds $57.78 — half the regular rate for the five extra hours — for $1,097.78 total. Same arithmetic, different packaging.
Where federal and state rules differ, you get whichever pays more. A handful of states beat the 40-hour standard:
| Jurisdiction | Overtime trigger beyond the federal 40/week |
|---|---|
| California | 1.5× past 8 hrs/day; 2× past 12 hrs/day; 7th consecutive day: 1.5× first 8 hrs, 2× after |
| Colorado | 1.5× past 12 hrs/day |
| Alaska | 1.5× past 10 hrs/day |
| Nevada | 1.5× past 10 hrs/day for employees under a wage threshold |
The California version bites hard. A $25/hr employee working one 10-hour day earns $275, not $250, because hours 9 and 10 pay $37.50. Stretch that day to 13 hours and the gross hits $400: eight at straight time, four at time-and-a-half, and hour 13 at double time. Multipliers and thresholds shift with legislation, so confirm current specifics with your state labor department before leaning on any single row.
In the private sector, no — compensatory time off in place of cash overtime is legal only for government employees. A private employer can let you flex your schedule within the same workweek (come in late Thursday after a late Tuesday), because that never crosses 40 hours. But once the hours are worked past 40, the premium has to show up as money.
Hospitals have a special arrangement: they can agree with staff on an "8 and 80" system, paying overtime past 8 hours a day or 80 hours per 14-day period. It's one of the few lawful substitutes for the standard workweek, and it only applies to healthcare workers who agree to it in advance.
Enter your rate, hours, and multiplier — regular pay, overtime pay, and effective hourly rate, instantly.
Overtime Calculator →Overtime is 1.5× your fully loaded regular rate — base pay plus promised bonuses and differentials — past 40 hours in a standalone workweek, with double time in a few states and daily triggers in California, Colorado, Alaska, and Nevada. If you're salaried under $684 a week federally (or under $70,304 in California for 2026), you're owed overtime regardless of title. Check your stub once a year against the arithmetic above; claims reach back two years, three if the violation was willful. To turn a weekly number into an annual picture, the payroll calculator and hourly-to-salary calculator handle the rest of the check, and the state-by-state version of this tool lives at the overtime pay by state calculator.
No. The Fair Labor Standards Act measures each workweek on its own, always. A 45-hour week followed by a 35-hour week still owes five overtime hours — the employer cannot offset them, and paying every two weeks doesn't change the math, only when it shows up on a check.
Generally yes, in any amount, as long as it pays the premium and you're over 18 — refusing scheduled overtime can legally be a firing offense in most states. What's illegal is refusing to pay for it, or retaliating against a worker who asks for the correct rate or files a wage claim.
Yes. Tipped workers are owed time-and-a-half beyond 40 hours too, computed on their regular rate — the cash wage plus tip credit the employer claims. The overtime premium cannot be paid at the reduced cash wage alone.
Under federal law, two years from the violation, extended to three years for willful violations. Some states allow longer. The Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division takes complaints free of charge, and retaliation for filing is separately illegal.
No. Overtime is ordinary wage income at the same rate as the rest of your check. It can look taxed harder because a big overtime paycheck pushes that period's withholding into higher brackets, but it all reconciles on your annual return.