California Overtime Rules: Daily, Double Time, and Weekly Pay

California overtime rules require time-and-a-half pay after eight hours in a workday or forty hours in a workweek, and double time after twelve hours in a workday. These daily thresholds make the state’s protections significantly stronger than federal law, which only triggers overtime after forty hours in a week. The rules apply to most non-exempt employees under Labor Code Section 510, and the Division of Labor Standards Enforcement handles complaints when employers don’t comply.¹

Daily Overtime After Eight Hours

Eight hours is a standard workday in California. Every hour you work beyond eight in a single workday must be paid at no less than one and one-half times your regular rate.¹ If you earn $25 per hour, hours nine through twelve each pay $37.50. A “workday” is whatever consecutive 24-hour period your employer has fixed as the start of your shift cycle. If no period is defined, it defaults to the calendar day.

This is where California breaks hardest from federal law. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, four 10-hour days produce no overtime because the week stays at 40 hours. In California, that same schedule generates eight hours of daily overtime unless the employer has adopted a valid alternative workweek schedule.

Double Time After Twelve Hours

Once a workday passes twelve hours, pay doubles. California requires twice the regular rate for every hour worked beyond twelve in a single workday.¹ At a $25 regular rate, each hour past the twelfth pays $50. The second tier exists to make extremely long shifts expensive enough that most employers avoid them.

Double time also kicks in on the seventh consecutive day of a workweek, but with its own structure. The first eight hours on that seventh day pay time-and-a-half, and anything beyond eight hours jumps to double time.¹ The rule catches employees working an entire week without a day off, even if no single shift is especially long.

Weekly Overtime Beyond Forty Hours

California also requires time-and-a-half for any hours worked beyond forty in a single workweek.¹ A workweek is a fixed, recurring period of seven consecutive 24-hour days starting on the same day and time each week. Your employer picks the starting point, and once set, it cannot shift week to week to dodge overtime obligations.

Hours already paid as daily overtime do not count again toward the 40-hour weekly threshold. This prevents “pyramiding,” where the same hour would trigger premium pay twice. Your employer applies whichever calculation produces the higher pay for a given hour, but never stacks daily and weekly overtime for the same time worked.

How the Regular Rate Is Calculated

The overtime multipliers apply to your “regular rate of pay,” which is almost always higher than your base hourly wage. California includes nearly every form of compensation tied to your work in the regular rate: non-discretionary bonuses, production incentives, commissions, and shift differentials such as night or weekend pay.² The purpose is to stop employers from paying a low base wage padded with bonuses that conveniently vanish from the overtime math.

The basic formula divides your total compensation for the workweek by the total hours worked. If you earned $800 in base pay plus a $200 production bonus over 45 hours, your regular rate is $22.22 per hour ($1,000 ÷ 45). Your overtime premium is then 0.5 times that regular rate for each overtime hour, because you already received straight-time pay for those hours through the base calculation.²

Discretionary bonuses and holiday gifts that aren’t tied to hours, production, or efficiency stay out of the regular rate.² The test is whether the bonus depends on something measurable about your work. A surprise year-end gift is out. A quarterly bonus pegged to sales targets is in.

Alternative Workweek Schedules

California’s daily overtime rule would make any compressed schedule illegal without a specific carve-out. Labor Code Section 511 provides one. Under a valid alternative workweek schedule, employees can work up to 10 hours per day within a 40-hour week without triggering daily overtime.³ The classic example is a four-day, 10-hour schedule.

Adopting one requires a secret-ballot election in which at least two-thirds of the affected work unit votes in favor. The employer proposes the schedule, but employees must approve it. Once adopted, the pay rules shift:

Up to 10 regularly scheduled hours per day pay straight time.
Hours beyond the scheduled workday, or beyond 10 hours in a day, pay time-and-a-half up to 12 hours.
Hours beyond 12 in a day pay double time, same as under a standard schedule.
Hours beyond 40 in a week still pay time-and-a-half.

Employers cannot cut your hourly pay rate because an alternative workweek was adopted or repealed.³ They must also make a reasonable effort to accommodate employees who cannot work the alternative hours. Healthcare employers under certain IWC Wage Orders have additional flexibility, allowing shifts up to 12 hours per day within a 40-hour week without daily overtime under a valid election.⁴

Who Is Exempt From California Overtime

Not every worker in California qualifies for overtime. The most common exemptions are the executive, administrative, and professional categories. Under Labor Code Section 515, an employee must meet all three parts of the test:

Duties test: more than half of the employee’s working time involves exempt work requiring discretion and independent judgment.⁵
Discretion test: the employee customarily and regularly exercises discretion and independent judgment in those duties.
Salary test: the employee earns a monthly salary equivalent to at least twice the state minimum wage for full-time (40-hour) employment.⁵

With California’s minimum wage at $16.90 per hour as of January 1, 2026, the salary floor for exempt employees is $70,304 per year ($16.90 × 2 × 40 × 52).⁶ That’s substantially higher than the federal threshold of $684 per week ($35,568 annually) for the same exemptions. California’s floor rises automatically with the state minimum wage.

Other Common Exemptions

Outside salespersons are exempt if they spend more than half their working time away from the employer’s place of business making sales or obtaining orders, and they have no minimum salary requirement. Computer software professionals are exempt if they earn at least $58.85 per hour in 2026 and perform qualifying duties like systems analysis, software design, or programming. Licensed physicians and surgeons have a separate exemption with their own pay threshold.

Employees covered by a collective bargaining agreement that provides premium overtime pay of at least time-and-a-half and a regular hourly wage of at least 30 percent above the state minimum wage may fall outside the standard overtime rules under Labor Code Section 514.¹

Misclassification

Employers bear the burden of proving that an exemption applies. When a worker is labeled exempt but doesn’t actually meet the duties or salary tests, they can recover unpaid overtime plus interest and reasonable attorney’s fees through a civil action, reaching back three years.⁷ The title on your business card is irrelevant. What matters is how you actually spend your working hours and whether your salary meets the threshold.

Unauthorized Overtime Still Gets Paid

A common employer defense is that the overtime was never approved. California doesn’t accept that argument. If the employer knew or should have known that an employee worked beyond eight hours, the overtime must be paid whether or not it was formally authorized. An employee cannot deliberately hide overtime and then demand pay, but the burden sits on the employer to monitor hours and enforce its scheduling policies. Posting a “no unauthorized overtime” rule does not erase the obligation to pay for overtime that actually happened.

The employer may discipline an employee for working overtime without permission, but discipline and pay are separate issues. Docking pay for unapproved overtime is a wage violation. The remedy is workplace discipline, not withholding compensation.

If You Weren’t Paid Correctly

California imposes penalties on top of the wages owed. Under Labor Code Section 558, the Labor Commissioner can assess $50 per underpaid employee per pay period for an initial violation, plus the full amount of underpaid wages. Repeat violations rise to $100 per employee per pay period on top of the wages.⁸

Employees who file a civil lawsuit to recover unpaid overtime are entitled to the full amount owed plus interest and reasonable attorney’s fees.⁷ California’s liquidated damages provision under Labor Code 1194.2 applies to minimum wage violations but does not extend to overtime claims.⁹

You can file a wage claim directly with the Labor Commissioner’s Office without hiring a lawyer. The filing triggers an investigation and, if the claim has merit, a hearing before a deputy labor commissioner. A civil lawsuit may make more sense for larger claims or when attorney’s fees are likely to be recovered. Either way, the statute of limitations for unpaid overtime in California is three years from the date each paycheck should have included the overtime pay, so waiting cuts directly into what you can collect.

1
California Legislative Information. California Labor Code LAB 510
2
California Department of Industrial Relations. California Department of Industrial Relations – Overtime FAQ
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California Legislative Information. California Labor Code LAB 511
4
Department of Industrial Relations. Exceptions to the General Overtime Law
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California Legislative Information. California Labor Code 515
6
Department of Industrial Relations. California’s Minimum Wage Set to Increase to $16.90 Per Hour
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California Legislative Information. California Labor Code LAB 1194
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California Legislative Information. California Labor Code LAB 558
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California Legislative Information. California Labor Code LAB 1194.2