Overtime Laws by State (2027): Daily Overtime, Double Time and Exemptions

Federal law requires overtime at one and a half times the regular rate for hours over 40 in a workweek, and nothing else: no daily overtime, no weekend premium, no double time. Most states copy that rule or have no overtime law at all. Six jurisdictions go further. California pays overtime after 8 hours in a day and double time after 12; Alaska and Puerto Rico pay after 8 hours a day; Nevada pays after 8 hours a day for lower-paid employees; Colorado pays after 12 hours in a day or 12 consecutive hours; Oregon pays manufacturing workers after 10 hours a day; and California and Kentucky pay a premium for a seventh consecutive day. On January 1, 2027 Oregon's farm workers reach the 40-hour threshold and Colorado's drop to 56.

This page sets out the federal baseline, every state rule that departs from it with the statute, the 2027 changes, the rules on mandatory overtime for nurses, why private employers cannot offer comp time, and how the federal deduction for overtime pay interacts with state daily overtime, which it does not cover. Statutes marked with an asterisk were read directly in October 2026; the others rest on agency summaries and should be checked against the statute before a section number is quoted.

The federal rule

Section 7 of the Fair Labor Standards Act, 29 USC 207, requires covered non-exempt employees to be paid at least one and a half times their regular rate for hours worked over 40 in a workweek. The workweek is a fixed, recurring 168 hours that the employer chooses; hours cannot be averaged across two weeks. The regular rate includes all remuneration for employment, so nondiscretionary bonuses, shift differentials and commissions raise the overtime rate, while discretionary bonuses, gifts, expense reimbursements and paid time off do not. There is no federal daily overtime, no premium for weekends or holidays as such, and no double time. Overtime cannot be waived by agreement, and the employer owes it for hours it knew or should have known were being worked, including unapproved overtime, which it may discipline but must pay.

Who is exempt is the harder question. Executive, administrative and professional employees paid a salary of at least $684 a week and meeting the duties tests are exempt, as are outside sales staff, certain computer employees paid at least $27.63 an hour, and a long list of industry exemptions. Our exempt salary thresholds 2027 page covers the salary tests, including the higher state figures.

States with daily, double-time or seventh-day overtime

Every other state either requires overtime after 40 hours in a week like the federal rule or defers to the FLSA. Washington, New York, Illinois, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and the others have their own overtime statutes with the 40-hour trigger, sometimes with different exemptions from the federal list: Washington, for example, does not recognize the federal highly compensated exemption, and New York requires overtime for residential employees after 44 hours.

California

California's rule is the one every multistate payroll has to program separately. Non-exempt employees earn one and a half times the regular rate after 8 hours in a workday or 40 in a workweek, and for the first 8 hours worked on the seventh consecutive day of the workweek. They earn double time after 12 hours in a day and after 8 hours on that seventh day. Daily and weekly overtime do not stack: an hour counted as daily overtime is not counted again toward the 40. The seventh-day rule has a carve-out for employees who work no more than 30 hours in the week and no more than 6 hours on any day of it. The workday is any fixed 24-hour period the employer designates, and the workweek any fixed seven days; once set, they cannot be changed to avoid overtime.

Three features catch employers from other states. The regular rate for a flat-sum bonus is computed by dividing the bonus by straight-time hours only, not total hours, which produces a higher rate than the federal method (Alvarado v. Dart Container, 2018). Meal and rest period premiums under Labor Code 226.7 are wages owed at the regular rate, so a missed meal break and the overtime that caused it are two separate liabilities; our meal and rest break laws by state page has the rules. And an alternative workweek schedule, which lets employees work four 10-hour days without daily overtime, is valid only if adopted by a two-thirds secret ballot of the affected work unit and filed with the Division of Labor Statistics and Research within 30 days. Healthcare workers under Wage Order 4 and 5 may adopt 12-hour alternative schedules, with double time after 12.

Alaska, Nevada, Colorado, Oregon, Kentucky and Puerto Rico

Alaska pays one and a half times after 8 hours in a day and after 40 in a week under AS 23.10.060, but exempts employers with fewer than four employees, and allows a voluntary flexible work hour plan under which employees work four 10-hour days with department approval. Daily overtime hours are excluded from the weekly count. Community health aides, certain flat-rate mechanics and small mines are among the exemptions listed in the state's wage and hour summary.

Nevada is the only state whose daily overtime depends on pay. Under NRS 608.018, an employee paid less than one and a half times the minimum wage earns overtime after 8 hours in any 24-hour period as well as after 40 hours in a week; with the minimum wage at $12.00 since July 1, 2024, the line is $18.00 an hour, confirmed in the Labor Commissioner's annual bulletin of June 29, 2026. Employees paid $18.00 or more earn overtime only after 40 hours. Both groups may agree in writing to a schedule of four 10-hour days without daily overtime. The 24-hour period starts when the employee begins work, so a shift that starts at 6 a.m. one day and 4 a.m. the next can produce overtime even though neither shift exceeded 8 hours.

Colorado under COMPS Order 40 pays one and a half times after 40 hours in a week, after 12 hours in a workday, or after 12 consecutive hours regardless of when the workday starts or ends, and the employee receives whichever calculation produces the most overtime. Meal periods count toward the 12 consecutive hours unless they meet the order's duty-free standard. Colorado has no seventh-day rule and expressly forbids compensatory time off in place of overtime pay for private employers.

Oregon applies daily overtime only in mills, factories and manufacturing establishments: one and a half times after 10 hours in a day or 40 in a week, and since Senate Bill 984 (2017) the employer pays whichever of the two calculations is greater rather than both. Canneries, driers and packing plants not on a farm follow the same rule with a cap of 55 hours a week, or 60 with the employee's written consent. Agricultural workers are on a declining weekly threshold that reaches 40 hours on January 1, 2027.

Kentucky's rule in KRS 337.050 is narrow. An employer that permits an employee to work all seven days of a workweek must pay one and a half times for the hours worked on the seventh day, unless the employee was not permitted to work more than 40 hours in the week. Pages that describe a Kentucky seventh-day premium regardless of weekly hours misread the statute.

Puerto Rico, under Act 379 of 1948 as amended by the 2017 Labor Transformation and Flexibility Act, requires a premium for hours over 8 in a calendar day and over 40 in a week, and for work on legally required closing days. The 2017 act set the premium at one and a half times for employees hired after its effective date; employees hired earlier may still be owed double time under their original terms, and sources disagree on how that grandfathering operates, so take advice before setting a rate. An employer may adopt an alternate 24-hour cycle with five days' written notice, and must allow at least 8 hours between shifts.

States with no overtime law of their own

Alabama, Florida (for private employers), Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee have no state overtime statute, and Iowa, Texas and several others defer to federal law for private employers. In those states the FLSA alone applies, which matters in two ways. Employees of small businesses outside FLSA enterprise coverage (under $500,000 in annual sales and not engaged in interstate commerce individually) may have no overtime right at all, and claims run only through the Department of Labor or federal court with the FLSA's two-year limitations period (three for willful violations), rather than a state agency with a longer window. Where a state does have its own statute, the longer of the two limitations periods and the higher of the two standards apply.

Changes in 2026 and 2027

• Federal: the Department of Labor removed the vacated 2024 salary rule from the regulations on May 15, 2026, leaving the exempt threshold at $684 a week. No federal overtime rulemaking is on the 2026 agenda.
• Oregon agriculture: the overtime threshold for farm workers falls from 48 hours to 40 hours on January 1, 2027, completing the 2022 schedule (55 in 2023, 48 in 2025).
• Colorado agriculture: Senate Bill 26-121 sets the agricultural overtime threshold at 56 hours a week from January 1, 2027 and raises penalties for wage theft and misclassification.
• New York agriculture: the farm worker threshold dropped to 52 hours on January 1, 2026 and falls 4 hours every other year until it reaches 40 in 2032.
• Nevada: the daily overtime pay line stays at $18.00 while the minimum wage stays at $12.00; the Labor Commissioner reissues the bulletin each July 1.
• Washington and California raise the salary needed for exemption on January 1, 2027, which moves more employees into overtime eligibility; see the January 1, 2027 roundup.

Mandatory overtime limits for nurses

Separate from overtime pay, about eighteen states limit whether a hospital can require nurses to work beyond their scheduled shift. The lists published by nursing organizations and law firms differ at the margins, so the states below are those that appear on every list we compared: California, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas and Washington; Alaska, Maine and West Virginia appear on most. The statutes share a shape: a nurse may not be required to work beyond the agreed shift or beyond 12 hours in 24 except in an unforeseeable emergency after the employer has made reasonable efforts to find staff, and refusal cannot be grounds for discipline. Oregon's ORS 441.166 adds a 48-hour weekly cap for hospital nurses and a 10-hour rest after a 12-hour shift; Pennsylvania's Prohibition of Excessive Overtime in Health Care Act covers hourly healthcare workers beyond nurses. The federal 8-and-80 system, which lets hospitals pay overtime after 8 hours in a day and 80 in two weeks under FLSA section 7(j), is sometimes mislabeled a Pennsylvania rule; it is a federal option available to any hospital or residential care facility with employee agreement.

Comp time, averaging and paying overtime late

Private employers cannot give compensatory time off instead of overtime pay. Section 7(o) of the FLSA allows comp time at one and a half hours per overtime hour only for state and local government employees, and Colorado's order spells the private-sector prohibition out. A private employer may let an employee leave early later in the same workweek so that the week never exceeds 40 hours, which is scheduling rather than comp time, but once the week has passed 40 the premium is owed in cash. Hours cannot be averaged across workweeks even with the employee's consent, except under the hospital 8-and-80 system.

Overtime is due on the regular payday for the period in which it was earned. Where the amount cannot be computed by then, for example because a bonus that affects the regular rate is paid later, 29 CFR 778.106 allows payment as soon as practicable, no later than the next payday after the computation is possible. State payday laws can be stricter; California requires overtime earned in one pay period to be paid no later than the payday for the next regular period.

The overtime tax deduction and state overtime

The 2025 reconciliation law created a federal income tax deduction for "qualified overtime compensation" for tax years 2025 through 2028: up to $12,500 a year ($25,000 on a joint return), phased down by $100 for every $1,000 of modified adjusted gross income above $150,000 ($300,000 joint). Two limits matter here. First, only the premium portion counts, the half in time and a half, not the whole overtime wage. Second, only overtime required by FLSA section 7 qualifies: hours over 40 in a workweek. California daily overtime, Alaska and Nevada daily overtime, Colorado's 12-hour rule, seventh-day premiums and any overtime paid under a union contract or company policy beyond the federal requirement do not count, except to the extent the same hours would also have been overtime under the 40-hour rule. The IRS fact sheet FS-2026-13 says so directly. For 2026 wages, employers must report the qualified premium in Box 12 of Form W-2 with code TT, reporting the full amount even above the cap, and an employee cannot deduct more than the amount in that box. Our no tax on overtime calculator separates the federal premium from state-only overtime, and the year-end payroll checklist covers the W-2 change.

Tracking hours so the overtime is right

29 CFR 516.2 requires a record of the hours worked each workday and each workweek for every non-exempt employee, and the daily figure is what makes California, Alaska, Nevada and Colorado overtime computable. Payroll systems built for the 40-hour rule often store only weekly totals or apply rounding that erases the eighth hour; time clocks that round to the nearest quarter hour are lawful under 29 CFR 785.48 only if the rounding is neutral over time, and California courts have grown hostile to rounding where exact time is available. Our time card calculator and overtime calculator handle the daily and weekly rules together, and the clock in clock out app review notes which tools can be configured for California daily overtime out of the box.

Key takeaways

• Federal law requires overtime only after 40 hours in a workweek, at one and a half times the regular rate; there is no federal daily overtime or double time.
• California pays 1.5x after 8 hours in a day and 2x after 12, plus seventh-day premiums; Alaska and Puerto Rico pay after 8 hours a day; Nevada pays after 8 hours a day for employees earning under $18.00; Colorado pays after 12 hours in a day or 12 consecutive hours; Oregon manufacturing pays after 10 hours; Kentucky pays a seventh-day premium only in weeks over 40 hours.
• Colorado has no seventh-day rule, Kentucky's seventh-day rule does not apply under 40 hours, and the 8-and-80 system is a federal hospital option, not a Pennsylvania rule. Those are the three most repeated errors on competing pages.
• On January 1, 2027 Oregon's farm workers reach the 40-hour overtime threshold and Colorado's drop to 56; New York's fall to 48 in 2028.
• Private employers cannot substitute comp time for overtime pay and cannot average hours across weeks.
• The federal overtime tax deduction covers only the FLSA-required premium for hours over 40; state daily overtime does not qualify, and the 2026 W-2 reports the qualified amount in Box 12 code TT.
• Daily hour records are required under 29 CFR 516.2 and are what make state daily overtime computable.