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You earn 22 dollars an hour and pull a 47-hour week to hit a deadline. Those seven extra hours should not pay 22 dollars each — under federal law they pay 33 dollars each, because overtime is time-and-a-half. That means your paycheck for the week is 40 hours at 22 dollars plus 7 hours at 33 dollars, which is 880 plus 231, or 1,111 dollars instead of the 1,034 you would get if every hour paid the same. The Overtime Pay Calculator nails that premium down to the cent so you can check whether your employer is paying you correctly.
Getting overtime right matters because wage theft on extra hours is one of the most common payroll errors. For the full rulebook in plain English, read our breakdown of overtime pay rules, and once you know your gross overtime earnings, see the after-tax reality with the Take-Home Pay Calculator.
The Fair Labor Standards Act sets the federal floor: non-exempt employees must receive at least 1.5 times their regular rate for every hour worked beyond 40 in a single workweek. The key phrase is regular rate, and it is not always just your base hourly wage. If you earn nondiscretionary bonuses, shift differentials, or commissions, those get folded in to compute a blended regular rate that is often higher than your listed hourly pay. Overtime is calculated on that blended figure, so ignoring a bonus can shortchange you.
The formula itself is straightforward once the regular rate is set. Overtime pay equals overtime hours times the regular rate times 1.5. Total weekly pay is your regular hours times your regular rate, plus that overtime amount. Note the FLSA measures overtime per workweek, not per pay period or per day — 45 hours one week and 35 the next means 5 hours of overtime, not zero, even though the two-week total is 80. Some states layer daily overtime rules on top, requiring the premium after 8 hours in a single day regardless of the weekly total.
Take a warehouse associate paid 18.50 dollars an hour who works 52 hours in a week and also earns a 100-dollar production bonus that qualifies as nondiscretionary. First, find the regular rate: base pay is 52 times 18.50, or 962 dollars, plus the 100-dollar bonus equals 1,062 dollars, divided by 52 hours gives a regular rate of 20.42 dollars. Overtime covers the 12 hours past 40. The overtime premium is half the regular rate — 10.21 dollars — times those 12 hours, adding 122.52 dollars on top of the straight-time pay already counted. His gross for the week works out to roughly 1,184.52 dollars. Skip the bonus in the regular-rate step and you would have underpaid him, which is exactly the kind of error the calculator surfaces.
Not everyone qualifies for overtime. The FLSA exempts many salaried executive, administrative, and professional employees who meet both a salary threshold and a duties test — being paid a salary alone does not make you exempt. The Department of Labor spells out these categories and the current salary threshold in its overtime guidance at dol.gov, and the broader wage-and-hour fact sheets at the Wage and Hour Division explain how the regular rate is defined. If your result does not match your paycheck and you are classified as non-exempt, that discrepancy is worth raising with your employer or the DOL.
Misclassification is a bigger problem than most workers realize. Employers sometimes hand out an impressive job title and a modest salary specifically to sidestep overtime, but the law looks at what you actually do, not what your badge says. If you spend your days performing routine tasks rather than exercising independent judgment or supervising others, you may be owed back overtime even while carrying a manager title. The calculator gives you a concrete dollar figure to test that suspicion — plug in the hours you logged, compare against the flat salary you received, and you will see instantly whether a real gap exists.
Keep your own record of hours rather than relying solely on the company clock. A simple weekly log of start and end times, noting any work done from home or through lunch, becomes powerful evidence if a dispute ever arises. When you tally those logged hours against your paystub and the calculator's expected figure, small recurring shortfalls — twenty minutes here, an unpaid pre-shift setup there — add up to real money across a year, and they are far easier to recover when you can point to a contemporaneous record.
It is your total straight-time earnings for the week — base wages plus nondiscretionary bonuses, shift differentials, and commissions — divided by the hours you worked. Overtime rides on that blended number, not just your headline hourly wage.
No. The FLSA only mandates time-and-a-half. Double-time is a matter of state law or your employer's policy — California, for instance, requires it after 12 hours in a day — so check your local rules before expecting a 2x rate.
Regular overtime can meaningfully lift your yearly total. Once you know your typical extra hours, convert the boosted figure back to an equivalent salary with the Salary to Hourly Calculator to see the full-year picture. Eight overtime hours a week at a 33-dollar premium rate, for instance, adds about 13,700 dollars across a year — enough to reshape a budget or fully fund a retirement account on its own.
Generally no. Under federal rules only hours you actually work count toward overtime, so a week with 32 worked hours plus 8 hours of holiday pay usually totals 40 for overtime purposes and triggers no premium, even though your paycheck shows a full week. State laws and union contracts can be more generous, so check the terms that apply to you.
When your overtime is verified, model a base-pay bump with the Raise Calculator, put the extra earnings to work in the Compound Interest Calculator, browse the other legal and income calculators, or return to the full directory.
Legal and tax disclaimer: This page is for informational and educational purposes only and is not legal advice and not tax advice. Settlement values, tax outcomes, wage rules, and employment classifications depend on jurisdiction-specific law and the facts of your situation. Consult a licensed attorney or tax professional before acting on any figure you see here. See our full Disclaimer.