Overtime Hours Calculator

An overtime week is not just a bigger paycheck. It is two different kinds of pay stacked together: straight-time pay for the regular hours, and a premium for the hours past the line. This overtime hours calculator keeps those pieces separate, so you can see exactly how much of your week is ordinary pay, how much is the extra half-rate premium, and what your time was really worth on average across every hour you worked.

Quick Answer

How time-and-a-half actually works

Time and a half sounds like a single number, but payroll treats it as two layers. Every overtime hour is first paid at your ordinary rate, exactly like a regular hour. Then a premium of half your rate is added on top. That split is why this page shows the premium as its own line: the first layer is ordinary wages, and only the second layer is the extra cost of asking someone to work past the standard week.

Under the federal rule in the Fair Labor Standards Act, a nonexempt employee must receive at least 1.5 times the regular rate for hours worked over 40 in a workweek. The trigger is weekly, not daily, at the federal level. A 10-hour day on its own creates no federal overtime if the week still totals 40 or fewer hours. State law can be stricter, and several states add daily triggers, which is covered below. The federal floor is a minimum, not a ceiling: an employer or a union contract can pay more.

The regular rate is also broader than many people expect. According to the Department of Labor, it is total straight-time earnings divided by total hours worked, so shift differentials and nondiscretionary bonuses, the kind promised in advance for production or attendance, count toward it. Discretionary bonuses, such as an unannounced holiday gift, generally do not. If your regular rate on paper looks lower than your real straight-time earnings, your overtime rate is probably understated too.

Reading the three numbers that matter

The headline total answers the simplest question: what does the week pay? The three supporting numbers answer the questions people actually argue about on a pay stub.

The premium only. At $22 an hour, 8 overtime hours carry an $88 premium. That is the extra cost of overtime itself, stripped of the straight-time pay those hours would have earned anyway. When you compare an overtime week with a straight 40-hour week, $88 is the true uplift, not $264. Confusing the two is the most common mistake in overtime talk: $264 is what the 8 hours paid in total, and $88 is how much more they paid than ordinary hours would have.

The effective rate. Divide the $1,144 week by all 48 hours and you get $23.83 an hour. That blended figure sits between the $22 base rate and the $33 overtime rate, pulled toward the base rate because most hours are still regular hours. It is the fair number to hold against a salaried offer or a second job: a 48-hour week at $22 with overtime is worth the same, hour for hour, as a straight-time job paying $23.83.

The overtime share. Overtime pay is 23.1% of this gross week. That share grows quickly as overtime hours pile up, which is why a week with heavy overtime can feel much richer than its hourly rate suggests, and why losing the overtime shifts hurts more than losing the same number of ordinary hours.

How to use this calculator

Enter your regular hourly rate, the regular hours in the week, and the overtime hours only, not the total. Press Calculate Overtime and read the premium line before the total: it tells you what the overtime itself added. If you work a week with no overtime, enter 0 overtime hours and the tool returns straight-time pay with a $0 premium, which is a useful check that the inputs are entered the right way round. Results are gross pay, before income tax, Social Security, Medicare, and any other deductions.

One input choice deserves care. This tool fixes the multiplier at 1.5x, the federal minimum. If your overtime is paid at double time, or at a different contract rate, this is the wrong page for that week: use the sibling overtime rate calculator, which lets you set the multiplier yourself and prices the week at that rate. The two pages are deliberately separate: this one answers “what does my overtime week pay at the standard rate, and how much of it is premium”, while the sibling answers “what is my overtime rate at this multiplier”.

The 2025-2028 federal overtime premium deduction, explained

For tax years 2025 through 2028, federal law allows an income-tax deduction for the overtime premium only, the extra half-rate portion that this calculator isolates. In the worked example that is $88 for the week, not $264. The deduction is capped at $12,500 a year for single filers and $25,000 for married couples filing jointly, and it phases out above $150,000 of modified adjusted gross income for single filers and $300,000 for joint filers. It is claimed on your tax return; it does not change withholding week to week, and Social Security and Medicare taxes still apply to all overtime pay.

Two limits catch people out. First, only overtime required by the Fair Labor Standards Act qualifies as the statute is written, so premium pay that comes only from a state rule, a contract, or an employer policy sits on shakier ground for this deduction than the federal premium does. Second, the deduction is temporary: after the 2028 tax year it ends unless Congress extends it. Treat any tax benefit as a return-time adjustment, not as extra take-home pay in the week you work the hours.

If your overtime premium over a year is large, keep the premium line from each week rather than the overtime total. Adding up weekly premiums gives you the figure the deduction is actually based on, and it is the number your year-end pay records should let you check.

What overtime calculators get wrong

Most overtime calculators on the first page of results do one of three things badly. First, several price the whole week and stop there, with no premium line at all, so a reader cannot tell what overtime itself added or what might be deductible. Second, several treat the base wage as the regular rate and ignore shift differentials and nondiscretionary bonuses, which understates the overtime rate for exactly the workers who earn those extras. Third, several annualize a single overtime week by multiplying by 52 without saying so, turning one heavy week into a promised yearly income that no variable schedule delivers.

This page avoids all three. The premium is a headline output, not a footnote. The regular-rate section tells you to use the combined straight-time rate, not just the base wage. And the tool prices one week only, with no silent annualization: if you want a yearly figure, multiply a realistic average week yourself, and say which weeks you averaged.

A related trap is the tax question. Overtime is not taxed at a higher rate. It falls in the same federal brackets as regular pay. Withholding can look higher in a big overtime week because payroll systems annualize that week, treating it as though you earn that much every week, which pushes the withholding calculation into a higher bracket for that paycheck. The tax on the year as a whole is set by your total annual income, not by any single week.

Checking a pay stub with this tool

Take one week from your pay stub and split it the way the tool does. Multiply your regular rate by your regular hours, multiply the rate by 1.5 and then by your overtime hours, and compare each line with the stub, not just the total. A total can match while the split is wrong, for example when overtime hours were paid at straight time and the difference was hidden in a bonus line. If the premium line on your stub is smaller than the tool shows, check two things first: whether your regular rate on the stub includes shift differentials and nondiscretionary bonuses, and whether any of your hours were classified as daily overtime under a state rule rather than the federal weekly rule.

For the wider paycheck picture, a paycheck increase calculator shows what a raise does to the same week, a per-check salary calculator converts salary across pay frequencies, and a night shift salary calculator prices shift differentials that feed into the regular rate itself. Each answers a different question from this page, and each is worth running before you negotiate hours, a rate, or a shift pattern.

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