Kentucky Overtime Laws: Rules, Exemptions, and Claims

Under Kentucky overtime laws, most employees must be paid one and a half times their regular rate for every hour worked beyond 40 in a single workweek, and Kentucky adds a separate seventh-day premium that federal law does not require.¹ Both state and federal wage rules apply to Kentucky jobs, so you get whichever standard pays more in your situation. The catch is the exemptions: a long list of workers and industries fall outside these protections entirely, and job title alone doesn’t decide it.

The 40-Hour Rule

Once you cross 40 hours in a workweek, every additional hour has to be paid at time and a half your regular hourly rate under KRS 337.285.¹ A workweek is a calendar week or any other fixed period of seven consecutive days the employer has permanently adopted.² Your employer picks when the seven-day cycle starts. It doesn’t have to begin on Sunday, and it doesn’t have to match your pay period.

Overtime is calculated by the week, not by the pay period. If you’re paid biweekly or monthly, each workweek inside that pay period is measured on its own. Work 30 hours one week and 50 the next, and you’re owed 10 hours of overtime for the second week even though the two-week total averages out to 40.

The Seventh-Day Overtime Premium

Kentucky adds something the federal Fair Labor Standards Act does not: if your employer has you work all seven days of a single workweek, every hour on the seventh day is paid at time and a half.² It’s a separate rule from the 40-hour threshold. What triggers the premium is working seven consecutive days in the workweek, regardless of how many hours each day involved.

There’s a limit. The seventh-day rule doesn’t apply if the workweek’s total stays at 40 hours or below.² Seven short shifts adding up to only 38 hours won’t earn the premium. But if those seven shifts push you past 40, your employer owes time and a half for every hour on the seventh day. When the same hours would also generate overtime under the 40-hour rule, the employer can credit one against the other rather than stacking both premiums on top of each other.

Who the Seventh-Day Rule Skips

Several categories of workers are carved out of the seventh-day protection:

Officers, superintendents, foremen, and supervisors whose main role is directing other employees
Bookkeepers, stenographers, and technical assistants working for doctors, lawyers, accountants, and similar Kentucky-licensed professionals
Workers under the Federal Railway Labor Act, seamen, workers on navigable waterways, railroad icing crews, and common carriers supervised by the Department of Vehicle Regulation
Employees of telephone exchanges with fewer than 500 subscribers

These exclusions apply only to the seventh-day rule.² Being in one of these categories doesn’t automatically strip you of standard 40-hour overtime under KRS 337.285.

Who Is Exempt From Kentucky Overtime

Exemptions come from two places. KRS 337.010 excludes certain workers from wage-and-hour protections altogether by writing them out of the definition of “employee,” and KRS 337.285 lists additional industry carve-outs from the overtime requirement itself. This is where most pay disputes start.

The White-Collar Exemption

Kentucky exempts workers in bona fide executive, administrative, supervisory, professional, outside sales, and outside collector roles from both minimum wage and overtime.³ Two tests must be met. You must earn at least $684 per week on a salary basis.⁴ And your actual day-to-day duties must meet the criteria in 29 C.F.R. Part 541.

The $684 weekly figure works out to $35,568 a year and matches the federal level the U.S. Department of Labor currently enforces after a court vacated the DOL’s 2024 attempt to raise it. A separate highly compensated employee shortcut applies at $107,432 annually and uses a looser duties analysis.⁵

Titles don’t decide this. If your employer calls you a manager but you spend most of your shifts stocking shelves or running equipment, the exemption probably doesn’t apply. Kentucky’s regulation ties each exemption to a specific federal duties test, so what you do all day matters far more than what’s on your business card.

Industry and Role Exemptions Under KRS 337.010

Several categories of workers fall outside Kentucky wage protections entirely:

Agriculture workers
Federal government employees
Domestic service workers and babysitters
Newspaper delivery workers
Employees of nonprofit camps, religious organizations, and nonprofit educational conference centers
Workers providing 24-hour residential care in their own homes or at employer facilities
Direct sellers as defined in the Internal Revenue Code
Behavioral support services providers
Professional baseball players
Employees of small retail, service, hotel, motel, and restaurant businesses averaging less than $95,000 in annual gross sales over the previous five years

The full list is in KRS 337.010(2)(a).³

Overtime-Specific Exemptions Under KRS 337.285

Even employees covered by Kentucky’s wage laws generally can lose their overtime protection under carve-outs written directly into the overtime statute. These include retail store workers whose duties involve selling, purchasing, or distributing merchandise; restaurant, hotel, and motel employees; in-home companionship service providers for elderly or infirm individuals; and workers already exempted from overtime under specific FLSA sections.¹

The companionship services exemption has limits. General household work cannot exceed 20% of total weekly hours, and the exemption does not cover trained medical personnel like registered or practical nurses.¹

Calculating Your Regular Rate

Overtime is 1.5 times your “regular rate,” which isn’t always the same as your base hourly wage. Non-discretionary bonuses, shift differentials, and commissions all have to be folded in before multiplying by 1.5. Employers who skip this step underpay overtime every single pay period.

Here’s how the math works. Base pay is $16 per hour, you work 45 hours in the week, and you earn a $200 production bonus. Straight-time compensation is $16 × 45 = $720, plus the $200 bonus = $920. Divide $920 by 45 hours and your regular rate is $20.44. The overtime premium on the five extra hours is half the regular rate ($10.22) times five, or $51.11, on top of the $920. An employer who ignores the bonus and just pays 1.5 × $16 × 5 = $120 in overtime is underpaying by more than $31 for that week alone.

Discretionary bonuses, gifts, and expense reimbursements generally do not count toward the regular rate. The line between discretionary and non-discretionary is whether the employer promised or structured the bonus in advance. A holiday gift card is discretionary. A quarterly bonus tied to production targets is not.

Comp Time Is a Public-Sector Option Only

Private-sector employers in Kentucky cannot substitute compensatory time for overtime pay. County and city employees, along with Kentucky State Police Trooper R Class and CVE R Class members, may take comp time in place of cash overtime under certain conditions.¹

The arrangement requires a voluntary written request from the employee, made without pressure, plus a written agreement in place before the overtime work is performed. For workers covered by the FLSA, comp time accrues at one and a half hours per overtime hour. Public safety, emergency response, and seasonal workers can bank up to 480 hours; everyone else caps at 240.¹ If you work for a private employer and they offer comp time instead of overtime pay, that’s a violation.

Filing a Claim for Unpaid Overtime

If your employer has shorted your overtime, you can file a complaint with the Kentucky Education and Labor Cabinet’s Division of Wages and Hours. The state has an online complaint form asking for your personal information, your employer’s details, your pay rate, and a description of the violation.⁶ During filing you choose whether investigators can use your name or whether you want to stay anonymous. Investigators then review payroll records and may interview both sides.

You can also file a federal complaint with the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division, or bring a private lawsuit. Many workers take the federal route because FLSA claims allow recovery of attorney’s fees on top of back wages and liquidated damages. Which path makes sense depends on how much is at stake and whether the violation is still going on.

Beyond back pay, employees can recover liquidated damages equal to the unpaid wages, effectively doubling the amount owed. Courts must award liquidated damages unless the employer proves it had a good-faith belief its pay practices were lawful.⁷ Simply not knowing the rules does not meet that standard.

How Long You Have to File

Under federal law, you have two years from the date of the violation to recover unpaid overtime. If the violation was willful, the window is three years.⁷ Willful means the employer either knew its pay practices violated the FLSA or showed reckless disregard for whether they did. Kentucky has its own limitations period under KRS 337.385 for state-level claims. Don’t wait: every paycheck that slides past the cutoff is money you can no longer recover.

Retaliation Is Prohibited

Asking about your overtime pay or filing a complaint is protected activity. Federal law bars employers from firing, demoting, cutting hours, or otherwise punishing any employee who reports a wage violation, files a complaint, or cooperates with an investigation, whether the complaint went to the employer directly, the Labor Cabinet, or the federal Wage and Hour Division.⁸ Most courts have held that even an informal, oral complaint to a supervisor counts.

Remedies for retaliation include reinstatement, back pay for lost wages, and liquidated damages equal to those lost wages.⁸ The protection is broad enough to reach former employees and workers whose jobs would not otherwise fall under the FLSA.

What Counts as Hours Worked

Overtime disputes often come down to whether certain time counted as work at all. Kentucky follows the federal framework, and a few of the rules catch people off guard.

Your normal commute from home to work is not compensable. If your employer requires you to pick up equipment, materials, or coworkers first, that travel does count. Travel between job sites during the workday always counts. A one-day trip to another city for a work assignment is compensable from the time you leave for the airport or train station until you return, minus your normal commute distance.

Overnight travel is compensable when it falls during your regular working hours, even on days you wouldn’t normally work. Time spent as a passenger outside your normal hours, when you’re free to relax and not performing any work, generally is not compensable. Short breaks under 20 minutes count as working time. Meal breaks of 30 minutes or more do not, as long as you’re completely relieved of duties.

Training time counts as hours worked unless it meets all four of these conditions: attendance is voluntary, it happens outside regular work hours, the training is not directly related to your job, and you perform no productive work during the session. Mandatory training, safety meetings, and any session your employer requires all count toward your 40-hour total.

1
Justia. Kentucky Code 337.285 – Time and a Half for Employment in Excess of Forty Hours
2
Kentucky Legislative Research Commission. Kentucky Revised Statutes 337.050 – Time and a Half for Work Done on Seventh Day of Week, Exceptions
3
Kentucky Legislative Research Commission. Kentucky Revised Statutes 337.010 – Definitions for Chapter
4
Kentucky Legislative Research Commission. 803 KAR 1:071 – Executive, Administrative, Supervisory, or Professional Employees, Salesmen
5
U.S. Department of Labor. Earnings Thresholds for the Executive, Administrative, and Professional Exemptions
6
Kentucky Education and Labor Cabinet. Employment Complaint Form
7
U.S. Department of Labor. Fair Labor Standards Act Advisor
8
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 77A – Prohibiting Retaliation Under the Fair Labor Standards Act