Title: 40 hours during middle of shift
If an employee accumulates 40 hours during the middle of a shift, does time and a half start exactly at the time 40 hours are accumulated?
Work week example:
Monday through Thursday with 11 hour shifts. Time and a half would technically begin on the seventh hour of work on Thursday.
Hi James,
This is a great question, and one that many people get confused with.
The direct answer to your question is yes, it is possible for overtime to begin in the middle of your shift, after hitting 40 non-overtime hours in a week. But that would normally happen on the employee’s sixth day of work—if, say, the employee worked less than eight hours on one or more of the five previous workdays in the workweek, causing the 40th non-overtime hour to fall in the middle of a shift on the sixth day of work.
The issue I think you’re asking about relates to a practice called overtime pyramiding. This involves the double counting an employee’s daily and weekly overtime hours. Overtime pyramiding is not required in California.
In the scenario you proposed—assuming the employee is nonexempt and not on an alternative workweek—the employee should have already earned overtime for three hours each day on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Those daily overtime hours do not count toward the employee’s weekly overtime calculation.
You are correct that the general rule is that any work performed that exceeds eight hours in a day or 40 hours in a workweek must be paid at an overtime rate. And, at first glance, the employee in your scenario technically worked more than 40 hours in the workweek. But many of those initial 40 hours were paid at an overtime rate, and do not count toward the employee’s weekly overtime number.
The correct way to calculate an employee’s overtime is to follow these three easy steps:
- Determine the daily overtime hours the employee has accumulated during the workweek.
- Subtract the employee’s daily overtime hours from the total hours the employee worked during the workweek.
- If the employee has more than 40 hours leftover, those additional hours must be paid at a rate of time-and-a-half.
Put another way, the weekly overtime trigger of 40 hours is reached after the employee has worked 40 hours at straight or regular-time.
Using this method of calculating overtime, the employee in your scenario could work five consecutive 11-hour shifts and still not receive overtime pay attributable to their weekly overtime rate.
They would instead earn three overtime hours each day and eight regular (non-overtime) hours. If they worked five 11-hour days in a row, they would have 15 total overtime hours and 40 non-overtime hours.
I hope this information helps. If you would like to learn more about how to calculate overtime, please check out our California overtime calculator. You can also check out our Guide to California’s Overtime Laws.
Please remember that this information does not constitute legal advice and should not be relied on. Nor does it create an attorney-client relationship.
I wish you the best of luck in your situation!