California Labor Code 510 requires employers to pay non-exempt employees overtime at 1.5 times their regular rate for hours worked beyond eight in a workday or 40 in a workweek, and double their regular rate for hours worked beyond 12 in a workday. The statute also sets premium rates for the seventh consecutive day of work in a workweek. Unlike federal law, which tracks only weekly hours, California triggers overtime on a daily basis, so a single long shift can create a premium pay obligation even if your weekly total stays modest.
The Overtime Triggers Under Section 510
Non-exempt employees earn overtime at one and one-half times their regular rate under three separate triggers:1California Legislative Information. California Code LAB 510 – Overtime Pay Requirements
- Hours worked beyond eight in a single workday, up to the 12-hour mark.
- Hours worked beyond 40 in a single workweek.
- The first eight hours worked on the seventh day of the workweek.
A higher premium — double the regular rate — applies in two situations:1California Legislative Information. California Code LAB 510 – Overtime Pay Requirements
- Any work past 12 hours in a single workday.
- Any work past eight hours on the seventh day of the workweek.
On a 14-hour workday, that breaks down as the first eight hours at straight time, hours nine through twelve at 1.5 times, and hours thirteen and fourteen at double time. On the seventh day of the workweek, the first eight hours pay at 1.5 times, and anything past that jumps to double time.
The seventh-day rule is often misread. “Seventh day” means the seventh day of the employer’s defined workweek, not simply the seventh consecutive calendar day a person happens to work. If the employer’s workweek runs Sunday through Saturday and you work all seven of those days, Saturday is the seventh day no matter what your schedule looked like the previous week.
The daily and weekly triggers operate independently. If you work a 10-hour shift on Monday, two hours of daily overtime are earned immediately — they are not held in reserve to see what the weekly total ends up being. This is the core difference from federal overtime law and the reason California’s system is more protective for employees who work long days.
Who Is Covered
Labor Code 510 applies to non-exempt employees, which covers the large majority of California’s hourly workforce. Whether you qualify as exempt depends on duties, authority, and pay. If your employer treats you as exempt, that classification must satisfy all three prongs of California’s test, not just the salary one.
Under Labor Code 515, an exempt employee must spend more than half of working time on executive, administrative, or professional duties, must regularly exercise discretion and independent judgment, and must earn a monthly salary equal to at least twice the state minimum wage for full-time work.2California Legislative Information. California Code LAB 515 – Overtime Exemptions With California’s 2026 minimum wage at $16.90 per hour, that salary floor works out to roughly $70,304 per year.3California Department of Industrial Relations. Minimum Wage An employee earning less than that is non-exempt regardless of job title.
A handful of categories fall outside the overtime rules entirely, including outside salespeople, certain commissioned employees, and workers covered by collective bargaining agreements that provide premium rates at least 30 percent above minimum wage.4California Department of Industrial Relations. Exemptions From the Overtime Laws The job title an employer assigns, by itself, means nothing. What matters is the actual work performed and whether the salary threshold is met.
How the Workday and Workweek Are Defined
Because every trigger in Section 510 runs off a workday or a workweek, those definitions decide when the overtime clock starts.
A workday is any consecutive 24-hour period starting at the same time each calendar day. The employer picks the starting hour, and once chosen, it stays fixed.5California Legislative Information. California Code LAB 500 – Definitions The workday does not have to match the start of a shift, and different shifts can have different workdays. Changing a workday is only permitted when the change is permanent and not designed to dodge overtime.6Labor Commissioner’s Office. DLSE Glossary
A workweek is any seven consecutive days — 168 hours — beginning on the same calendar day each week.5California Legislative Information. California Code LAB 500 – Definitions The employer picks the starting day and it stays fixed. Different workweeks can apply to different employees, but the same anti-manipulation rule governs any change.6Labor Commissioner’s Office. DLSE Glossary
The Regular Rate of Pay
The overtime multiplier applies to your “regular rate of pay,” not necessarily your base hourly wage. For an hourly employee with no bonuses or extras, the two are the same. For anyone earning shift differentials, non-discretionary bonuses, commissions, or piece-rate pay, the calculation is more involved.
The regular rate equals total non-overtime compensation earned in the workweek divided by total hours worked that week. Non-discretionary bonuses — attendance, performance, production, safety — have to be folded in.7U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 56C – Bonuses Under the Fair Labor Standards Act So do commissions and shift differentials. Discretionary bonuses, expense reimbursements, and vacation pay are excluded.
This distinction trips up a lot of employers. A quarterly production bonus, for example, has to be allocated back to the workweeks it covers, and overtime for those weeks recalculated. Employers who skip that step underpay overtime even when they track hours accurately.
No Pyramiding of Daily and Weekly Overtime
California does not allow the same hour of work to count toward both daily and weekly overtime. Once an hour has been paid as daily overtime, it drops out of the weekly calculation.1California Legislative Information. California Code LAB 510 – Overtime Pay Requirements
Say you work five 10-hour days. Each day produces two hours of daily overtime, so you have 10 overtime hours for the week. Your total is 50 hours, which is 10 over the 40-hour weekly threshold, but those same 10 hours have already been paid as daily overtime. The weekly calculation adds nothing more. The employer pays whichever method — daily or weekly — produces the larger number of overtime hours, not both stacked together.
When an Alternative Workweek Changes the Rules
Labor Code 511 lets a workplace adopt an alternative workweek schedule under which employees can work shifts of up to 10 hours without triggering daily overtime, as long as weekly hours stay within 40.8California Legislative Information. California Code LAB 511 – Alternative Workweek Schedules A four-day, 10-hour schedule is the most common version.
Management cannot impose this unilaterally. The employer proposes the schedule to a work unit, and at least two-thirds of affected employees must approve it by secret ballot.8California Legislative Information. California Code LAB 511 – Alternative Workweek Schedules If the vote fails, the standard Section 510 rules keep running.
Once an alternative schedule is in place, the thresholds shift. The 1.5 rate applies to hours beyond the regularly scheduled shift length (up to 12), and double time applies to any hours past 12 in a day or past eight on days worked outside the regular alternative schedule.8California Legislative Information. California Code LAB 511 – Alternative Workweek Schedules The weekly 40-hour rule still applies.
If Your Employer Is Not Paying Overtime
If overtime is missing from your paycheck, you have two main paths.
You can file a wage claim with the Labor Commissioner’s Office. Filing is free and can be done online, by email, by mail, or in person. The deadline for an overtime claim is three years from the date the wages should have been paid.9Labor Commissioner’s Office. How to File a Wage Claim Missing that deadline means losing the ability to recover those wages, and pay records only get harder to reconstruct over time.
You can also sue in court. Under Labor Code 1194, an employee who was paid less than the required overtime can recover the full unpaid amount plus interest, reasonable attorney’s fees, and costs.10California Legislative Information. California Code LAB 1194 – Action for Overtime Compensation The fee-shifting rule is the reason many employment lawyers take overtime cases on contingency.
One limitation worth knowing: California’s liquidated damages statute, Labor Code 1194.2, does not cover overtime claims. Liquidated damages, which effectively double the unpaid amount, are available only for minimum wage violations.11California Legislative Information. California Code LAB 1194.2 – Liquidated Damages If you are owed both unpaid minimum wages and unpaid overtime, you can seek liquidated damages on the minimum wage portion only.