The definition of overtime is any extra time spent working after your scheduled or standard hours. The maximum amount of hours you can work at a normal pay rate in California is 8 hours daily and 40 hours weekly. After that, employers are required by law in the FLSA (Fair Labor Standards Act) to pay 1 ½ your normal pay rate for every extra hour worked. Many people are confused about how to calculate California daily and weekly overtime hours and we explain here how it is done and how your time system should be calculating it when both the eight hours daily and forty hours weekly are exceeded.

As an example, let’s say that Jim works long hours six to seven days per week. In this particular week he worked up to two hours of overtime every day and on one day he worked 6 hours of overtime. Jim’s question is whether or not his daily overtime should be added into his weekly hours of overtime as well. The simple answer is no. The California overtime law states that daily overtime hours, once paid for, cannot be used again towards the weekly total for overtime. Pyramiding, or adding separate forms of overtime together in order to receive more overtime pay, is not required or allowed under California Law.

Some may ask, when and how much to pay in overtime. You would pay 1 ½ the employee’s hourly rate if…

You would have to pay double the employee’s hourly rate for...

Calculating just how much to pay employees who work more than both the weekly and the daily maximum hours gets a little more tricky. In order to avoid duplicated over time, you need to use the following rule. If the employee exceeds both the daily and weekly standard work hours, the employer is responsible to look at both the accumulated hours for weekly and daily overtime and add the one with the most hours to the paycheck. This way no hours are missed or duplicated. An example of this would be if the employee worked 11 hours of daily overtime and 7 hours of weekly overtime, they would be compensated for the 11 hours of daily overtime since it represents the most hours worked. You have to wait until the end of the week to add up the accumulated weekly and daily hours in order to calculate the correct wages.

Less than or Equal to 8 hours in a day

More than 8 hours in a day

More than 12 hours in a workday

More than 40 non-overtime hours in a workweek

7th consecutive day in a work week

More than 8 hours on the 7th consecutive day in a work week