Overtime Calculator

The Fair Labor Standards Act requires employers to pay at least 1.5 times the regular hourly rate for every hour worked beyond 40 in a single workweek -- the Department of Labor spells this out on their overtime page and it has not changed since the FLSA was enacted. On a $20 per hour wage that means $30 per hour for overtime, so five extra hours in a week adds $150 instead of the $100 you would earn at straight time. The part that catches people off guard is the workweek rule: averaging hours across two weeks is not permitted, which means working 30 hours one week and 50 the next still triggers 10 hours of overtime in the second week even though the biweekly total is 80.

We see this question more than any other in our overtime calculator traffic, and the answer is simpler than people expect -- your employer takes your regular hourly rate and multiplies it by 1.5 for every hour past 40. A $25 per hour worker gets $37.50 for each overtime hour, and the part that surprises most people is how fast that adds up: ten overtime hours at that rate produces $375 instead of the $250 you would earn at straight time, an extra $125 per week that compounds to roughly $500 per month just from the multiplier working in your favor.

The Department of Labor currently applies the 2019 rule after a federal court in Texas vacated the 2024 update on November 15, 2024. Under the rule in effect, salaried employees earning less than $684 per week ($35,568 per year) must receive overtime regardless of job duties. Above that threshold, exemption depends on whether the role qualifies as executive, administrative, or professional -- and the duties test is where most disputes happen, because a job title alone does not determine exemption status. Hourly employees are almost always eligible for overtime unless they fall into a narrow set of industry-specific exemptions.

Federal law under the FLSA does not require daily overtime -- the 40-hour threshold applies per workweek, not per day. California is the major exception: state law mandates 1.5x after 8 hours in a single day and 2x after 12 hours, regardless of weekly totals. A handful of other states have similar daily overtime rules, so the answer depends entirely on where you work. This calculator uses the federal 40-hour weekly standard since it covers the majority of US workers, but if you are in California you should factor in the daily calculation separately.

Here is the part that shocks most hourly workers -- the FLSA puts no cap on hours for anyone aged 16 and older, and the Department of Labor says so directly on their overtime page. Your employer can legally schedule you for 60 or 70 hours every week as long as they pay 1.5x for everything past 40, and the only real limits come from company policy, union contracts, or state-level regulations that some jurisdictions have added on top of the federal baseline. The one thing the FLSA absolutely does guarantee is that each of those extra hours must be compensated at the overtime rate, and your employer cannot average a light week with a heavy week to dodge the 40-hour trigger.

Multiply your total weekly pay by 52 to get the annual figure, but keep in mind that overtime is rarely consistent year-round -- a 50-hour week in busy season does not mean 50 hours every week. The calculator shows weekly, monthly, and annual projections so you can compare scenarios. If you are also evaluating a salary offer, our pay raise calculator converts annual numbers into per-paycheck amounts, and the platform comparison shows how much freelancers lose to processing fees on that income.