How Much Is Overtime Pay in Florida and Who Qualifies?

Overtime pay in Florida is set entirely by federal law. The state has no overtime statute of its own, so the Fair Labor Standards Act controls: if you’re a non-exempt employee, your employer owes you at least one and one-half times your regular hourly rate for every hour you work beyond 40 in a single workweek.¹ Industry, job title, shift, and whether the hours fall on a weekend or holiday don’t change that. What matters is your total hours in the workweek and whether your position is exempt.

How to Calculate Your Overtime Rate

Multiply your regular hourly rate by 1.5. That’s your overtime rate for every hour past 40 in the week. At $20 an hour, overtime pays $30. At Florida’s current $14 minimum wage, overtime pays $21. The state minimum rises to $15 on September 30, 2026, which pushes the minimum overtime rate to $22.50.¹

Two things the FLSA does not do: it does not cap how many hours your employer can schedule, and it does not require daily overtime. A 12-hour shift triggers nothing on its own. Only the weekly total above 40 matters.²

What Counts as a Workweek

A workweek is any fixed period of seven consecutive 24-hour days, 168 hours total. Your employer picks the starting day and time, and once set, that cycle repeats. The important restriction: employers cannot average your hours across two or more weeks to avoid paying overtime. Fifty hours one week and thirty the next means you’re owed overtime for the ten extra hours in the first week, even though the two-week average is exactly 40.¹

Which Hours Have to Be Counted

Not every minute is obvious, and misclassifying work time is one of the most common ways overtime gets underpaid. The FLSA treats these travel situations as follows:

Your normal commute from home to your regular workplace is not paid time.
Travel between job sites during the workday is paid time.
A special one-day assignment in another city counts as work time, minus what your usual commute would have been.
Overnight travel counts when it falls during your normal working hours, including on days you wouldn’t ordinarily work. Travel as a passenger outside those hours generally does not count.

These rules often catch employers in construction, healthcare staffing, and other industries where workers rotate between sites.³

Employers can round your clock-in and clock-out times to the nearest five minutes or quarter-hour, but the rounding has to be neutral over time. Consistently shaving minutes in the employer’s favor is not allowed. Tiny, truly unmeasurable slivers of time can be disregarded under the de minimis rule, but anything practically trackable has to be counted.⁴

Who Qualifies for Overtime

The default is that you qualify. The burden sits with your employer to prove you’re exempt, not with you to prove you’re covered. Most hourly workers in retail, hospitality, healthcare support, and manual trades are non-exempt and entitled to overtime.²

Coverage is broad. Most Florida employers meet the FLSA’s enterprise test (at least two employees and $500,000 or more in annual sales). Even if yours doesn’t, you’re individually covered if your own work regularly involves interstate commerce: handling out-of-state shipments, calling clients in other states, or processing interstate financial transactions.⁵

The White-Collar Exemptions

To be exempt from overtime, a worker has to pass both a salary test and a duties test. Salary alone is not enough. The salary threshold is $684 per week, or $35,568 per year.⁶

The duties test depends on the exemption:

Executive: You manage the business or a recognized department and regularly direct the work of at least two other employees.
Administrative: You perform office or non-manual work directly related to business operations and regularly exercise independent judgment on significant matters.
Professional: Your work requires advanced knowledge in a specialized field, typically gained through extended education.

If your employer pays you a salary of $684 per week but your actual duties don’t match one of these categories, you’re still entitled to overtime.⁶

Highly Compensated Employees

A separate exemption applies to workers earning at least $107,432 per year, with at least $684 of that paid weekly on a salary basis, who perform at least one duty associated with executive, administrative, or professional work. The duties test here is looser, but the pay bar is much higher.⁶

Commissioned Retail and Service Workers

Florida’s retail and service workforce is large, so this exemption comes up often. Under Section 7(i) of the FLSA, a retail or service employer can skip overtime only if all three of these are true: the employee works at a retail or service establishment, more than half of the employee’s earnings in a representative period come from commissions, and the employee’s regular rate for every hour worked in the overtime week exceeds one and a half times the applicable minimum wage.⁷ Miss any one of the three in a given week and overtime is owed.

What Goes into Your “Regular Rate”

Your overtime premium is based on your regular rate, which is often higher than your base hourly wage. Non-discretionary bonuses, commissions, shift differentials, and production incentives have to be folded in before the 1.5 multiplier is applied.⁸ A $2-per-hour night-shift differential, for example, raises both your regular rate and your overtime rate for every week you earn it.

These payments are excluded from the regular rate:

Gifts and holiday bonuses not tied to hours worked or productivity
Truly discretionary bonuses, where both the decision to pay and the amount are decided at the employer’s sole discretion near the end of the period
Payments for time not worked, such as vacation, holiday, or sick pay
Reasonable reimbursements for business expenses like travel or uniforms
Employer contributions to retirement, health insurance, or similar benefit plans

The split between “discretionary” and “non-discretionary” bonuses is where most disputes come from. If the bonus was promised in advance or follows a formula (attendance milestones, production quotas, revenue targets), it is non-discretionary and must be included in the regular rate, no matter what the employer labels it.⁸

What to Do if You’re Not Being Paid Correctly

You have two years from each unpaid overtime violation to act. If the violation was willful (the employer knew the law and ignored it, or showed reckless disregard), the deadline extends to three years.⁹ Each paycheck starts its own clock, so every week you wait permanently erases a week of back pay you could have recovered.

Florida has no state labor department that handles wage claims, so complaints go through the federal Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor. Call 1-866-487-9243 or use the WHD portal at dol.gov/agencies/whd, and the agency will route you to the nearest Florida field office.¹⁰ Bring what you have: pay stubs, personal time logs, schedules, and any written communication about your hours or pay. Perfect records aren’t required, but documentation speeds the investigation.

Filing a Private Lawsuit

You don’t have to wait for the government. The FLSA lets you sue your employer directly in federal or state court. A successful claim recovers the unpaid overtime plus an equal amount in liquidated damages, which effectively doubles what you’re owed, and the court must order the employer to pay your reasonable attorney fees and court costs.¹¹ That fee-shifting rule is why many employment attorneys take overtime cases on contingency, typically 25% to 40% of the recovery, with no upfront cost to you.

One limit: if the Secretary of Labor files a complaint on your behalf, your private right of action ends for the same violations.¹¹ A WHD complaint costs nothing and takes less effort. A private lawsuit can move faster and often recovers more, especially with liquidated damages on the table.

Retaliation Is Illegal

Your employer cannot fire you, demote you, cut your hours, or otherwise punish you for raising an overtime complaint, whether internally, to the WHD, or in court. The protection applies even if your claim turns out to be wrong, as long as you raised it in good faith, and it covers both oral and written complaints. If retaliation happens, you can file a separate claim for reinstatement, lost wages, and matching liquidated damages. The shield extends past the end of employment, so a former employer who blacklists you or gives a bad reference because of a wage claim is violating the same law.¹²

1
eCFR. 29 CFR Part 778 – Overtime Compensation
2
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 23 – Overtime Pay Requirements of the FLSA
3
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 22 – Hours Worked Under the Fair Labor Standards Act
4
U.S. Department of Labor. FLSA Hours Worked Advisor – Recording Hours Worked
5
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 14 – Coverage Under the Fair Labor Standards Act
6
U.S. Department of Labor. Earnings Thresholds for the Executive, Administrative, and Professional Exemption
7
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 20 – Employees Paid Commissions by Retail Establishments
8
eCFR. 29 CFR Part 778 Subpart C – Payments That May Be Excluded From the Regular Rate
9
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 USC 255 – Statute of Limitations
10
U.S. Department of Labor. How to File a Complaint
11
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 USC 216 – Penalties
12
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 77A – Prohibiting Retaliation Under the Fair Labor Standards Act