Time and a Half Calculator

What time and a half means

Time and a half is exactly what it sounds like: 1.5 times your regular hourly rate, paid for each overtime hour. If you earn $20 an hour, your time-and-a-half rate is $30. If you earn $15, it is $22.50.

The rule comes from the Fair Labor Standards Act, the federal wage law that sets the overtime requirement at 1.5 times the regular rate for every hour worked beyond 40 in a workweek. The US Department of Labor overtime page is the plain-language version, and Fact Sheet #23 has the technical detail.

Three words in that rule do a lot of work:

• Workweek, a fixed and recurring 168-hour period, usually Sunday to Saturday. Overtime is counted per week; hours do not average out over a month.
• Regular rate, not your hourly wage. It includes nondiscretionary bonuses, shift differentials and commissions, divided across the hours worked.
• Hours worked, time you are on the job. Paid holidays, vacation and sick leave do not count toward the 40.

That last point surprises people every year. Work 32 hours in a week that includes a paid holiday, and you are owed no overtime at all under federal law, because you only worked 32 hours.

Worked example: 46 hours at $18 an hour

This is the classic case, and it is where most payroll mistakes show up.

• Regular rate: $18.00
• Time-and-a-half rate: $18.00 x 1.5 = $27.00
• Regular hours: 40 x $18.00 = $720.00
• Overtime hours: 6 x $27.00 = $162.00
• Gross pay for the week: $720 + $162 = $882.00

Compare that with the wrong answer a lot of people get. If you paid all 46 hours at time and a half you would get $1,242, $360 too much. If you paid all 46 hours at the regular rate you would get $828, shorting the employee $54. The correct method is always: straight time for the first 40 hours, 1.5x for the rest.

One more number worth knowing is your effective rate. $882 spread across 46 hours is $19.17 an hour. Overtime does not lift your whole week by 50%, it lifts the marginal hours by 50%, six extra hours bought you $162, which is 18% more pay for 15% more hours.

Worked example: a 52-hour week at $15 an hour

Long weeks are where overtime adds up, and where you can see whether the extra hours are worth it.

• Regular rate: $15.00, time-and-a-half: $22.50
• Regular pay: 40 x $15.00 = $600.00
• Overtime pay: 12 x $22.50 = $270.00
• Gross pay: $870.00

Twelve extra hours added 45% to the week's pay. Now stack a second job on top: if you also worked 10 hours at a second employer at $15, that second job owes no overtime at all, because the 40-hour test applies per employer. Federal law does not combine hours from unrelated employers, which is why some people working 55 hours across two jobs never see a time-and-a-half rate.

For comparison, in California the same 52 hours would pay more. California requires 1.5x after 8 hours in a day and double time after 12, so a week built from five 10.4-hour days would include daily overtime hours that federal law would not count at all.

Time and a half rates at a glance

Overtime rate and the pay for 10 overtime hours at common wages:

All figures are gross pay before tax. Overtime is taxed like ordinary income, there is no special overtime tax rate, even though the extra withholding in a big week can make it look that way. The BLS Occupational Employment Statistics show what typical wages look like by occupation if you want to sanity-check your own rate.

How to find your regular rate (it is not always your hourly wage)

The regular rate is the average hourly rate you earned for the week, including certain extras. Getting this wrong is the most common source of underpaid overtime.

• Hourly plus a nondiscretionary bonus. Earn $600 in 40 hours plus a $60 production bonus and your regular rate is $660 / 40 = $16.50, so overtime is $24.75 an hour, not $22.50.
• Commissions. A $400 commission on top of $500 straight time gives a regular rate of $900 / 40 = $22.50 and overtime of $33.75.
• Shift differentials. An extra $2 an hour for night work is part of the regular rate, so it raises the overtime rate too.
• Discretionary bonuses. A genuine surprise holiday gift can be excluded. A bonus promised for hitting a target cannot.

Salaried but non-exempt works the same way: divide the weekly salary by the hours it is intended to compensate, then pay 1.5x that figure for hours past 40. The federal exemption threshold is $684 a week, which is $35,568 a year, but that number has been rewritten and struck down in court more than once in recent years, so verify the current figure on the DOL page before you assume you are exempt.

State rules that beat the federal minimum

Federal law is a floor. States can require more, and several do:

• California, 1.5x after 8 hours in a day or 40 in a week, and 2x after 12 hours in a day, plus 1.5x on the seventh consecutive day of work.
• Alaska, Nevada, Colorado and others, daily overtime after 8 or 12 hours depending on the state.
• States with a higher minimum wage, the overtime rate follows the higher rate, since it is 1.5x the regular rate.
• Union contracts, often 1.5x on Saturdays and 2x on Sundays, and holiday premiums, none of which federal law requires.

If you work in a state with daily overtime, keep your own record of daily hours. Payroll systems configured for the federal workweek will quietly miss daily overtime, and it is one of the most common wage claims. A simple spreadsheet of date, start, end and meal break is enough to reconstruct a year.

Holidays, tips and comp time: the three biggest myths

Myth 1: holidays are automatically time and a half. Federal law requires no premium pay for holidays at all. If your employer pays it, that is a policy or contract benefit, and the holiday hours themselves do not count toward 40 worked hours.

Myth 2: tipped employees get a smaller overtime rate. The opposite. Overtime for tipped workers is based on the full applicable minimum wage, not the lower cash wage. Where the minimum is $12, overtime is $18 an hour even if the cash wage is $2.13 plus tips.

Myth 3: you can take comp time instead. Private-sector employers generally cannot substitute comp time for overtime pay, the FLSA requires cash for hours over 40. Some public agencies can offer comp time at 1.5 hours per overtime hour, but that is a narrow exception with strict rules.

If you think you have been underpaid, keep your own records: hours worked, rate, and what you were paid. Wage claims are usually recoverable for two years, or three if the violation was willful, and the DOL's Wage and Hour Division takes complaints directly.