California Overtime Law: Daily, Weekly, Double Time and the 7th Day

California overtime law pays 1.5 times the regular rate for hours over 8 in a workday and over 40 in a workweek, and 2 times the regular rate for hours over 12 in a workday. On the seventh day of work in a workweek, the first 8 hours are paid at 1.5 times and every hour after 8 at 2 times. All of it comes from one paragraph of California Labor Code § 510(a).

Federal law only has the weekly rule. A California employee who works four 10 hour days is owed 8 hours of overtime for a 40 hour week; under federal law alone the same week has none. The rules, the definitions they depend on and four worked pay examples follow.

The rules in Labor Code § 510

The statute opens with "Eight hours of labor constitutes a day's work." It then says that no employer has to "combine more than one rate of overtime compensation" for the same hour. The calculator therefore pays each hour once, at the highest rate that applies to it, never 1.5 x 1.5.

Rule 4 has a detail that changes results: hours already paid as daily overtime are not counted again toward the 40. The weekly threshold is reached by regular hours only. Example 3 below shows why that matters.

Workday and workweek: the definitions behind the rules

Every California overtime number depends on where a workday and a workweek begin. Labor Code § 500 defines both:

• Workday: "any consecutive 24-hour period commencing at the same time each calendar day". It does not have to start at midnight. An employer can set it to start at 6:00 AM, for example.
• Workweek: "any seven consecutive days, starting with the same calendar day each week", a fixed and regularly recurring period of 168 hours. It does not have to start on Sunday.

Two consequences people often miss:

A split shift is one workday. With a workday that starts at midnight, someone who works 6:00 AM to 10:00 AM and again 4:00 PM to 10:00 PM has worked 4 + 6 = 10 hours in one workday, so 2 hours are daily overtime even though neither block is longer than 8. At $20 an hour: 8 x $20 + 2 x $30 = $220.

Seven days in a row is not always a seventh day. The seventh day rule applies to "the seventh day of work in any one workweek". If the workweek runs Sunday to Saturday and someone works 9 hours a day from Wednesday to the following Tuesday, the seven days are split 4 and 3 across two workweeks. No seventh day premium applies; each day simply has 1 hour of daily overtime.

The one workweek version is worked out step by step in example 4.

Worked examples at $20 an hour

Each example is one workweek with the time already net of unpaid meal breaks. Overtime at 1.5x is $30 an hour and double time at 2x is $40. The federal column applies only the 40 hour weekly rule from 29 U.S.C. § 207(a)(1).

Example 1: one 14 hour day

6:00 AM to 8:30 PM with a 30 minute meal break, 14 hours, and nothing else that week.

Federal rule: 14 hours in a week under 40, so all regular, $280.00.

Example 2: four 10 hour days

7:00 AM to 5:30 PM with a 30 minute break, Monday to Thursday. 40 hours in total.

• Each day: 8 regular hours and 2 hours at 1.5x, so 8 hours of daily overtime in the week.
• Regular hours: 4 x 8 = 32, under 40, so no weekly overtime.
• Pay: 32 x $20 + 8 x $30 = $640 + $240 = $880.00.

Federal rule: exactly 40 hours, no overtime, $800.00. A compressed week like this has daily overtime unless an alternative workweek schedule applies (see below).

Example 3: five 9 hour days and a 6 hour Saturday

51 hours in total. This is where counting overtime twice would go wrong.

The 5 daily overtime hours are not counted toward 40, so the 40 regular hours are reached on Friday evening and all of Saturday is weekly overtime. Pay: 40 x $20 + 11 x $30 = $1,130.00. The federal rule gives the same total here, 51 minus 40 = 11 hours, because every daily overtime hour in this week would have been weekly overtime anyway. Examples 1, 2 and 4 are where the two rules part ways.

Example 4: seven 9 hour days in one workweek

Sunday to Saturday, 9 hours every day, 63 hours.

• Sunday to Thursday: 8 regular plus 1 daily overtime hour each day. Regular hours reach 40 on Thursday.
• Friday (day 6): the 8 hours that would be regular are now over 40, so weekly overtime at 1.5x, plus 1 daily overtime hour.
• Saturday (day 7): the first 8 hours at 1.5x, the ninth at 2x.

Federal rule: 40 regular hours and 23 overtime hours, $1,490.00.

California vs federal overtime

Both apply at the same time. The federal law does not excuse anyone from a state law with a lower maximum workweek (29 U.S.C. § 218(a)), so in practice the California rule is the one to calculate. For the same hours, its result is never lower than the federal one.

California is one of four states with daily overtime in the U.S. Department of Labor's state table, along with Alaska, Nevada and Colorado. Other states can still have their own rules.

Exceptions to know about

Alternative workweek schedules. § 510(a) does not apply to an employee working under an alternative workweek schedule adopted under § 511, under a collective bargaining agreement (§ 514) or under § 554; the calculator does not model those schedules.

Exempt employees. Salaried exempt employees are not covered by these overtime rules, so check how your job is classified.

Regular rate. Overtime is a multiple of the regular rate of pay. The calculator multiplies the hourly rate you enter and does not work out a regular rate that includes bonuses or commissions.

Meal periods in Labor Code § 512

California also sets meal periods, which change how long a shift has to be to fit the hours in. Under Labor Code § 512(a):

The section lists exceptions for some industries and collective bargaining agreements. Rest breaks come from separate wage orders and are not covered here.

For the overtime math, what counts is the time worked after unpaid meal periods. A 6:00 AM to 4:30 PM shift with one 30 minute meal break is 10 hours of work: 8 regular and 2 at 1.5x.

This is a calculation, not legal advice.

How to calculate California overtime with the calculator

1. Open the overtime calculator and choose the California preset in the overtime panel.
2. Set the day your workweek starts so it matches your employer's workweek.
3. Enter start, end and unpaid meal break for each day. A shift that ends after midnight counts on the day it started, so if your employer's workday starts at a time other than midnight, check shifts near that boundary by hand.
4. Enter the hourly rate. The summary shows regular hours, overtime and double time, each in hours and minutes and in decimal, and the gross pay. The multipliers (1.5 and 2) can be changed.