At $25 an hour, a 48-hour workweek pays $1,300.00 gross: $1,000.00 of regular pay plus $300.00 of overtime at $37.50 an hour. Federal law requires time and a half — 1.5× your regular rate — for hours over 40 in a workweek if you are a covered, nonexempt employee. Double time is not required by federal law.
The weekly split: how overtime is actually counted
The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) counts overtime by the workweek, not by the day and not by the pay period. The U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division, puts the rule plainly: unless exempt, employees covered by the FLSA must receive overtime pay for hours worked over 40 in a workweek at not less than time and one-half their regular rate of pay. Sources: U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division, “Overtime Pay” (dol.gov/agencies/whd/overtime) and the DOL elaws FLSA Advisor (webapps.dol.gov/elaws).
A workweek is a fixed, regularly recurring period of 168 hours — seven consecutive 24-hour periods. It does not have to match the calendar week; your employer picks the start day, and the week then repeats. What an employer cannot do is average hours across weeks. Fifty hours this week and thirty next week is not “forty on average” — the fifty-hour week earned ten hours of overtime, full stop. That is why this calculator asks for one workweek at a time and splits it at your threshold: regular hours are the hours up to the threshold, overtime hours are everything above it.
The split matters because most pay-stub errors live in it. If your stub shows 48 hours paid entirely at your base rate, the missing piece is not the full overtime rate on eight hours — it is the premium, the extra half. This page shows that premium as its own line precisely so you can compare: regular pay, overtime pay, and the premium-only figure that represents what overtime added beyond straight time.
Regular rate vs base wage
Overtime is 1.5× the regular rate, and the regular rate is not always the same number as your base hourly wage. Under the DOL's guidance, the regular rate is total pay for the workweek (minus statutory exclusions) divided by total hours actually worked — and it can include nondiscretionary bonuses and shift differentials. A promised production bonus or a night-shift differential can therefore raise the legal regular rate, and with it the overtime owed.
This calculator makes a stated simplification: the hourly rate you enter is the regular rate. If you enter additional pay this week — a bonus or differential actually paid — the tool adds it to gross after the overtime computation and does not fold it into the rate. That keeps the arithmetic transparent, but it comes with the note the methodology requires: a nondiscretionary bonus can raise the legal regular rate and therefore the overtime owed, so if your week included one, the legally precise figure may be slightly higher than the gross shown here. When the difference matters, ask payroll to show its regular-rate math.
Who is covered, in general terms
The federal overtime rule applies to covered, nonexempt employees. Exempt employees — for example, many bona fide executive, administrative, and professional employees paid on a salary basis — are not entitled to FLSA overtime. Exemption turns on duties and pay basis, not on job title, and not on whether you are paid a salary: some salaried employees are nonexempt and owed overtime, and some hourly employees fall under specific exemptions.
This page describes coverage in general terms only and does not attempt to classify you. Classification is fact-specific, and getting it wrong in either direction is expensive. If the question is live for you, the DOL's elaws FLSA Advisor and your employer's payroll provider are the right next stops — not a calculator.
What federal law does not require: double time and daily overtime
Two common beliefs are wrong at the federal level. First, double time: the FLSA does not require it. The Department of Labor's FLSA FAQ states that extra pay for weekend or night work is a matter of agreement between an employer and an employee, and that the FLSA does not require extra pay for weekend or night work or double-time pay. Double time exists only where an employer policy, a contract or collective bargaining agreement, or a state law provides it — which is why the 2× option here is labelled “if your employer or state provides it,” never as a federal entitlement.
Second, daily overtime: the federal test is weekly. The FLSA does not require overtime pay for work on Saturdays, Sundays, holidays, or regular days of rest unless weekly overtime is worked on those days. Some states do impose daily overtime — over 8 hours in a day is the familiar pattern — and state law can be more generous than federal law. Where both apply, the higher standard controls. This tool models the federal weekly rule and your chosen threshold and multiplier; it does not model any specific state's daily rules, so check your state before treating the result as final.
Worked example
An employee earns $25.00 an hour and works 48 hours in one workweek, with the standard 40-hour threshold at 1.5× and no additional pay. The calculator is pre-filled with exactly this case:
- Regular hours: 40; overtime hours: 8
- Overtime rate: $25.00 × 1.5 = $37.50/hr
- Regular pay: 40 × $25.00 = $1,000.00
- Overtime pay: 8 × $37.50 = $300.00
- Overtime premium only: 8 × $25.00 × 0.5 = $100.00
- Total gross: $1,300.00; effective hourly rate $1,300.00 ÷ 48 = $27.08
- Annualized illustration: $1,300.00 × 52 = $67,600.00 — an illustration if this exact week repeated, not a salary promise
Run the same week at double time (2×) and the overtime rate becomes $50.00, overtime pay $400.00, the premium $200.00, and gross $1,400.00, for an effective rate of $29.17. Drop to 38 hours and there is no overtime at all: gross is $950.00 and the effective rate is simply $25.00.
Reading a pay stub against this result
Bring three numbers from this page to your stub. First, the hour split: does the stub show the same regular and overtime hours for the workweek? Second, the overtime rate: is it your rate times the multiplier you expected? Third, the premium: if your employer pays overtime hours at straight time in one line and the premium in another — a common payroll layout — the premium line should match the premium-only figure here. Overtime pay is regular pay for tax purposes: it is withheld like any other wages, not under the supplemental-wage rules that apply to bonuses. If you want to see how that separate system works, the Bonus Tax Calculator walks through it — but do not expect bonus-style withholding on an overtime check.