Overtime rules in Alaska
On a $20 hourly rate Alaska pays $30.00 an hour once you pass 8 hours in a day, the same rate it pays for every hour past 40 in the week. Four 10-hour days is still only 40 hours, and it pays $80 more here than in a state that counts the week alone — as long as your employer keeps four or more people on the payroll.
| A week at $20 an hour | Alaska | Federal rule | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Five 8-hour days, 40 hours | $800 | $800 | No difference |
| Four 10-hour days, 40 hours | $880 | $800 | +$80 |
| Three 12-hour days, 36 hours | $840 | $720 | +$120 |
| Two 12s and two 8s, 40 hours | $880 | $800 | +$80 |
| Five 10-hour days, 50 hours | $1,100 | $1,100 | No difference |
The daily rule
Alaska counts the day as well as the week. Any hour past 8 in a workday pays one and a half times your regular rate, and so does any hour past 40 in the week, whichever gives the bigger number. There is no double time and no seventh-day premium here — those belong to California, not Alaska. A 14-hour day is time and a half the whole way past the eighth hour, never twice the rate.
Hours are never counted twice
The daily and weekly rules don't stack. Once an hour has been paid as daily overtime it drops out of the 40-hour weekly count, so four 12-hour days come to 48 hours worked and 16 hours of overtime — all of it daily, none of it weekly, for $1,120 on a $20 rate. It is also why the 50-hour week in the table pays the same in Alaska as under the bare federal rule: by then the weekly overtime has caught up with the daily, and nobody is paid the premium twice.
Who the rule leaves out
Alaska's overtime rules do not apply to an employer with fewer than four employees in the regular course of business, so a shop of three people or fewer can pay straight time for every hour. A state-approved voluntary flexible work hour plan is the other exception: it lets an employee work up to 10 hours a day, at least four days a week, with no daily overtime up to that tenth hour, but it has to be genuinely voluntary and anything past 10 hours in a day or 40 in a week is still time and a half. Salaried executive, administrative and professional employees are exempt from both rules; a job title on its own exempts nobody.
Working out your own pay
The calculator above applies these rules to the hours you actually worked. If your week mixed two rates or included a production bonus, your regular rate is higher than your base and so is your overtime — the blended rate calculator works that out. The no-tax-on-overtime calculator turns the $10.00 premium on each overtime hour into what you can deduct, the time and a half calculator gives the rate alone, and overtime laws by state puts Alaska beside every other state's threshold.