Work past your normal hours and, in many jobs, each extra hour is worth more than a regular one. That premium is overtime pay, and in the United States it rests on a single foundational law: the Fair Labor Standards Act, or FLSA. Its core rule is easy to state — covered employees earn extra for the hours that push a week past a set threshold — but the details of who qualifies and how the rate is figured are where confusion creeps in.
Getting overtime right matters on both sides of a paycheck. Workers want to know they’re paid what they’re owed; the arithmetic is simpler than it looks once the pieces are named.
Time-and-a-half over 40 hours
Under the FLSA, covered non-exempt employees must be paid at least one and one-half times their regular rate of pay for hours worked beyond 40 in a workweek. That’s the phrase “time-and-a-half.” The threshold is weekly, not daily — the federal rule counts total hours across the workweek, not whether any single day ran long.
A workweek is a fixed, recurring period of 168 hours — seven consecutive 24-hour days — and it doesn’t have to line up with the calendar week. Hours generally aren’t averaged across two weeks: each workweek stands on its own for the 40-hour test.
Federal overtime is triggered by the 40-hour line in a single workweek — not by a long day, and not by an average across pay periods.
Exempt vs non-exempt
Not every employee is entitled to overtime. The FLSA divides workers into non-exempt employees, who are covered by the overtime rules, and exempt employees, who are not. Whether someone is exempt depends on how they’re paid and the actual duties of the job — commonly certain salaried roles in executive, administrative, and professional categories that also meet a salary threshold.
- Non-exempt — eligible for overtime; often paid hourly, though not always.
- Exempt — not entitled to FLSA overtime; extra hours don’t automatically add pay.
A job title alone doesn’t settle it. Being paid a salary doesn’t automatically make someone exempt; the pay level and the real duties both have to fit the legal tests.
How overtime is computed
The calculation starts from the regular rate of pay, which is more than just the base hourly wage — it can include certain bonuses and other compensation. For a straightforward hourly worker, though, the math is direct: multiply the regular rate by 1.5 for each hour past 40.
Suppose the rate is $20 an hour and the week runs 46 hours. The first 40 hours pay $20 each, or $800. The 6 overtime hours pay $30 each — $20 × 1.5 — for $180. The week totals $980. The overtime premium turned six extra hours into the pay of nine regular ones.
Canada: provincial rules vary
Canada doesn’t use one national overtime threshold. Employment standards are mostly set province by province, so both the trigger and the premium can differ. Many provinces use a weekly threshold — often 44 hours — above which time-and-a-half applies, but the exact number, and whether daily overtime exists, depends on where the work is performed. Some sectors fall under federal labour rules instead.
- Confirm your province’s threshold — it isn’t automatically 40 hours.
- Check whether daily overtime rules apply on top of a weekly limit.
- Certain industries and roles have their own standards or exemptions.
Wherever you are, the principle is the same: overtime exists to make long weeks cost more, and knowing your threshold and rate is the way to check that a paycheck reflects the hours actually worked.