Three inputs decide the whole answer
Overtime arithmetic is short. Hours below the threshold are paid once, hours above it are paid at a multiplier, and if a second tier exists the hours above that get their own multiplier instead. Forty-five hours at $20 with a forty-hour threshold and a 1.5 multiplier is 40 x $20 plus 5 x $30, which is $800 plus $150, which is $950. The calculation never gets harder than that.
What is genuinely hard is knowing which three numbers to put in, and that is not a maths problem. It depends on your job classification, your state, and your contract. The defaults on this page are the most common shape in the United States rather than a rule that applies to you.
What is national and what is not
Federal law sets a forty-hour weekly point for employees who are non-exempt: hours past forty in a workweek attract a premium. That is the piece that is the same everywhere. Almost everything else is local.
| Question | Where the answer comes from |
|---|---|
| Is there a weekly threshold? | Federal, for non-exempt employees. 40 hours. |
| Is there a daily threshold? | State law, where a state has one. Many states have none. |
| Is there a double-time tier? | State law or a contract. Not federal. |
| Are the seventh day or holidays special? | State law or a contract. |
| Am I exempt in the first place? | Duties, salary basis and salary level — the hardest question of the set. |
This page deliberately quotes no statute and asserts no state's rule as fact, because a figure that is right in one state and wrong in the next is worse than no figure at all. Set the thresholds to whatever governs you and the split will follow.
The exempt question, which nothing here can settle
The single largest determinant of whether any of this applies is whether you are classified as exempt. Exempt employees are outside the overtime requirement; non-exempt employees are inside it. The test is not "am I paid a salary" and it is not "does my title sound senior" — it looks at what the job actually involves alongside how the pay is structured, and misclassification is common enough that entire lawsuits are built on it.
A calculator has no access to any of that. This one prices hours at rates you supply and stops there. If the question you actually have is whether you should be receiving a premium you are not receiving, the place to take it is your state labor agency or an employment lawyer, both of which can look at the job.
Turning a salary into an hourly rate
Pick the salary option and the amount is divided by 52 weeks and then by your scheduled hours, so $52,000 at 40 scheduled hours is $25.00 an hour. That divisor is a convention. Some employers use a different one, some salaries are structured to include a set amount of additional work, and for exempt roles the whole exercise is notional. Treat the converted rate as a way to compare a salary against an hourly offer rather than as the number your employer would use.
If what you want is the hours themselves rather than the pay, the work hours calculator works from clock-in and clock-out with a break deduction, and the weekly hours tracker takes each day separately. From the employer's side of the same transaction, employee total cost covers what an hour actually costs to buy.
Questions people ask
Why 45 hours at $20 comes to $950 and not $1,350
Because the multiplier applies only to the hours above the threshold, not to the whole week. Forty hours are paid at the base $20, which is $800, and the five hours above forty are paid at $30, which is $150. The total is $950. Multiplying all forty-five hours by $30 gives $1,350, which would be the answer if the premium applied retroactively to the entire week — it does not, under any arrangement we are aware of.
What should I put in the double-time threshold?
Whatever your contract or your state specifies, and if neither specifies one, leave the tier switched off. The 55-hour default is a placeholder chosen to sit clearly above the overtime threshold, not a figure with any authority behind it. Double time in the United States comes from state rules and from collective agreements, and it is often expressed per day or per consecutive day rather than per week — if yours is a daily rule, run each long day separately rather than trying to express it as a weekly number.
Does the calculator handle a daily overtime rule?
Not directly, because it takes one weekly total. Where a daily rule applies, the usual practice is to count daily and weekly overtime separately and pay the larger of the two rather than adding them, so run each long day through with a daily threshold and compare that against the weekly result. The tracker on the weekly hours page splits seven days individually and shows both the daily and the weekly figure side by side, which makes that comparison easier.
Do bonuses change the overtime rate?
They can, and this page does not model it. Where a bonus is non-discretionary — tied to production, attendance or a formula — it typically has to be folded into the rate that the premium is calculated on, which raises the effective base above the quoted hourly figure. Purely discretionary bonuses generally do not. If your pay includes a regular production or attendance bonus, the base rate you enter here is likely too low, and the size of the gap depends on how the bonus is structured.
Is the result before or after tax?
Before. Every figure here is gross pay for the week. Withholding, payroll taxes and any deductions come off afterwards and depend on your filing situation, your state and your elections, none of which this page asks for. Expect the amount that reaches your account to be meaningfully smaller.