Overtime on a biweekly or semimonthly paycheck
At $20 an hour, 50 hours one week and 30 the next owe $1,700 on a biweekly check, not the $1,600 you get by treating 80 hours as two ordinary weeks. Overtime is counted one workweek at a time, never across the pay period, so the first week's 10 extra hours are overtime however light the second is.
| Two weeks at $20 an hour | Overtime hours | Owed, week by week | If the weeks are averaged | Short by |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 40 + 40 hours | 0 | $1,600 | $1,600 | Nothing |
| 45 + 35 hours | 5 | $1,650 | $1,600 | $50 |
| 50 + 30 hours | 10 | $1,700 | $1,600 | $100 |
| 60 + 20 hours | 20 | $1,800 | $1,600 | $200 |
| 50 + 50 hours | 20 | $2,200 | $2,200 | Nothing |
Each workweek stands alone
Federal law takes a single workweek as the unit and does not allow hours to be averaged over two or more weeks. A workweek is a fixed run of seven days your employer sets, and it does not have to match the pay period. A biweekly check covers two of them, and each gets its own 40. Averaging is where a two-week check goes wrong: in the table above it costs $100 on a 50 and 30 split. It only comes out right when both weeks land on the same side of 40.
Semimonthly pay
A check on the 15th and the last day of the month does not line up with workweeks at all, so one week often falls across two pay periods. Overtime is still counted for the whole workweek, and it is due on the regular payday for the period in which that week ends. If the amount cannot be worked out by then, federal rules allow it as soon after that payday as it can be, and no later than it takes to compute it.
Checking your stub
Ask for the hours by week, not the total for the period, and run each week through the calculator above. Some states also pay overtime by the day, which overtime laws by state lists. A week that mixes two rates needs the blended rate calculator, and the hourly to salary calculator turns a rate into a biweekly check before overtime.