Overtime rules in California
On a $20 hourly rate California pays $30.00 an hour once you pass 8 hours in a day and $40.00 once you pass 12, on top of the federal $30.00 for every hour past 40 in the week. Four 10-hour days is still only 40 hours, and it pays $80 more here than it would in a state without a daily rule.
| A week at $20 an hour | California | Federal rule | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Four 10-hour days, 40 hours | $880 | $800 | +$80 |
| Three 13-hour days, 39 hours | $960 | $780 | +$180 |
| One 14-hour day, then four 8s, 46 hours | $1,000 | $980 | +$20 |
| Five 10-hour days, 50 hours | $1,100 | $1,100 | No difference |
| Six 8s and a 10-hour seventh day, 58 hours | $1,360 | $1,340 | +$20 |
The daily rules
California counts the day as well as the week. Hours 9 through 12 of a workday pay one and a half times your regular rate. Everything past 12 hours in that day pays double. Work all seven days of one workweek and the seventh day pays time and a half for its first 8 hours and double time after that. The federal 40-hour rule still sits underneath all of it.
Hours are never counted twice
The two rules don't stack. Once an hour has been paid as daily overtime it drops out of the 40-hour 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. Counting those hours twice is called pyramiding and California's labor commissioner doesn't allow it. It is also why the 50-hour week in the table pays the same in California as it does under the federal rule.
When the daily rule doesn't apply
If your workplace voted in an alternative workweek — a secret ballot carried by two-thirds of the work unit — a scheduled day of up to 10 hours inside a 40-hour week carries no daily overtime, and the usual rates resume beyond that schedule. Salaried employees whose actual duties are executive, administrative or professional are exempt from both rules; a job title on its own exempts nobody. Some industries sit under their own wage order, so check the one named on your workplace poster if your stub doesn't match.
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 rate and so is your overtime — the blended rate calculator works that out. For the 2x hours on their own see the double time calculator, for the rate alone the time and a half calculator, and the no-tax-on-overtime calculator turns the $10.00 premium on each overtime hour into what you can deduct.