New York’s overtime laws require most employees to be paid one and a half times their regular hourly rate for every hour worked beyond 40 in a single workweek. The rules come from the state Minimum Wage Act and 12 NYCRR Part 142, and in several places they go further than federal law: higher salary thresholds for exempt workers, a six-year window to file a claim, and a spread-of-hours rule that has no federal equivalent. If you’re checking a paycheck or trying to figure out whether you have a claim, the details below are the ones that decide it.
The Basic Overtime Rate
Non-exempt employees earn 1.5 times their regular rate for each hour past 40 in a workweek.1New York State Department of Labor. 12 NYCRR 142 – Minimum Wage Order for Miscellaneous Industries and Occupations The regular rate is not always the same as your base hourly wage. It includes non-discretionary bonuses, shift differentials, and commissions tied to the work period. When an employer runs the 1.5 multiplier off the bare hourly rate and ignores those extras, every overtime hour comes up short.
Each workweek stands on its own. Employers sometimes try to average hours across two weeks or only pay overtime after a biweekly threshold, but that is not how the law reads. Fifty hours one week and thirty the next means ten hours of overtime pay for the first week, full stop.
Who Is Exempt From Overtime
The default is that you are entitled to overtime. The burden falls on your employer to prove an exemption, and the exemption has two parts: a salary test and a duties test. Both must be met. A “manager” or “assistant” title on a business card does not settle the question.
2026 Salary Thresholds
To qualify as an exempt executive or administrative employee, the worker must earn at least a minimum weekly salary. As of January 1, 2026:
- New York City, Nassau, Suffolk, and Westchester counties: $1,275.00 per week
- Rest of the state: $1,199.10 per week
These figures are set by the New York Department of Labor and adjusted periodically.2New York State Department of Labor. Minimum Wage Frequently Asked Questions The federal FLSA threshold sits at $684 per week after courts blocked a planned increase.3U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 17A: Exemption for Executive, Administrative, Professional, Computer and Outside Sales Employees Under the Fair Labor Standards Act Because the state number is nearly double the federal floor, plenty of workers who would be exempt under federal law alone are still owed overtime in New York.
The Duties Test
Meeting the salary threshold is not enough. The employee’s actual day-to-day work has to involve high-level management, operational decision-making, or tasks requiring genuine independent judgment. An employer cannot label someone a “manager” who spends most of the day stocking shelves or answering phones and then refuse to pay overtime. If the job fails the duties test, the worker is non-exempt no matter what they earn.
Licensed Professionals
Workers in licensed or learned professions sit in a separate category. Under New York law, professional employees have no minimum weekly salary requirement but are still exempt from overtime.4New York State Attorney General. Wages and Pay Doctors, lawyers, and teachers are the common examples. The exemption still turns on the nature of the work, not the title.
Different Thresholds for Live-In and Farm Workers
Two groups of workers hit overtime at a point other than 40 hours, and mixing them up with the standard rule is a common source of underpayment.
Residential (Live-In) Employees
If you live at your workplace, overtime starts after 44 hours in a workweek rather than 40.1New York State Department of Labor. 12 NYCRR 142 – Minimum Wage Order for Miscellaneous Industries and Occupations This covers live-in home health aides and building superintendents, among others. The rate is still 1.5 times the regular rate once the 44-hour mark is crossed. Residential house parents in children’s homes are excluded from this provision entirely.
Farm Workers
As of January 1, 2026, farm laborers earn overtime after 52 hours in a workweek.5New York State Department of Labor. New York State Department of Labor Reminds New Yorkers Decrease Farm Worker Overtime Threshold That threshold has been stepping down in stages and will keep dropping in coming years. If you work on a farm, watch the schedule of reductions, because payroll practices do not always update on time.
Spread of Hours Pay
New York has a provision that does not exist under federal law: the spread of hours rule. If the total span of your workday, from your first clock-in to your final clock-out, exceeds 10 hours, your employer owes you one extra hour of pay at the basic minimum wage rate.6Legal Information Institute. 12 NYCRR 142-2.4 The same extra hour applies if you work a split shift, even if your total spread stays under 10 hours. If both conditions apply on the same day, you still get just the one extra hour.
The trigger here is the length of the day, not weekly hours. You could work only six actual hours but span 11 hours because of a long unpaid break, and you would still be entitled to the extra pay. This catches a lot of restaurant and retail workers by surprise, because their employers often have no idea the rule exists. The payment is separate from overtime and must appear as its own line item on the pay stub.
Travel Time and On-Call Hours
Several categories of time that feel like work do not always count toward overtime, and vice versa. Getting these wrong in either direction is a reliable source of wage disputes.
Travel Time
Your normal commute from home to a fixed workplace is not compensable. Travel between job sites during the workday counts as hours worked.7U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 22: Hours Worked Under the Fair Labor Standards Act If you normally work in one location but get sent to another city for a single-day assignment, the travel time to and from that city counts as work time, minus whatever you would normally spend commuting. For overnight travel, time spent traveling during your regular working hours counts even on days you do not normally work.
On-Call Time
If your employer requires you to stay on the premises while on call, that is work time, period. If you are on call from home and generally free to do what you want, that time usually is not compensable. The line shifts when the employer imposes restrictions tight enough that you cannot realistically use the time for yourself, such as requiring a response within minutes or prohibiting you from going more than a short distance from the workplace.7U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 22: Hours Worked Under the Fair Labor Standards Act
What You Can Recover and How Far Back
New York does not treat unpaid overtime as a bookkeeping error. Recoveries are designed to make violations more expensive than compliance.
When a worker wins an overtime claim in court, they recover the full amount of unpaid wages plus 100% of that amount in liquidated damages, unless the employer can prove a good-faith belief that its pay practices were lawful.8New York State Senate. New York Labor Law LAB 198 In plain terms, $10,000 in unpaid overtime becomes $20,000. On top of that, the employer pays your attorney’s fees and prejudgment interest. When the Department of Labor investigates and issues an Order to Comply, it includes the 100% liquidated damages along with additional civil penalties and interest.9New York State Department of Labor. Wage Theft Prevention Act If an employer does not pay a court judgment within 90 days, the total automatically increases by 15 percent.
The lookback period is six years from the date of the underpayment.8New York State Senate. New York Labor Law LAB 198 That is significantly more generous than the federal FLSA, which allows two years for standard violations or three for willful ones. You can file with the state DOL at any time within the six-year window or skip the administrative process and sue directly. Either path preserves the same potential recovery.
How to File an Overtime Complaint
The formal process runs through the New York Department of Labor’s Division of Labor Standards. It is straightforward, and the quality of your documentation drives how quickly things move.
What to Gather Before You File
Pull together whatever you can find on the following:
- The specific weeks where overtime was unpaid or underpaid, with total hours worked each week
- Pay stubs, bank statements showing deposit amounts, or any other proof of what you actually received
- The legal business name, primary workplace address, and your supervisor’s name
- Any personal time logs you kept; these carry real weight when employer records are incomplete or disputed
You do not need a perfect paper trail to file. Investigators can subpoena the employer’s payroll records, and if your employer failed to keep the records the law requires, that failure works against them, not you. But a clean breakdown of the gap between hours worked and wages received speeds the investigation considerably.
The LS223 Form
The complaint goes on the Labor Standards Complaint Form, designated LS223.10New York State Department of Labor. Labor Standards Complaint Form for Individuals You can submit it online through the Department of Labor’s portal or mail a physical copy to the Division of Labor Standards at 1220 Washington Avenue, Building 12, Room 185B, Albany, NY 12226.11New York State Department of Labor. Labor Standards Complaint Form
Once submitted, the Department assigns a case number and sends an acknowledgment. An investigator will typically reach out within several weeks to clarify details or request additional documentation, and that investigator becomes the go-between with the employer. Keep copies of everything you send in; follow-up questions come.
Retaliation Is Illegal
Filing an overtime complaint, or even raising the issue with your boss, is protected activity under both state and federal law. Retaliation is where many employers make an already-bad situation worse for themselves.
New York Labor Law Section 215 prohibits employers from firing, threatening, penalizing, or discriminating against an employee for making a wage complaint, providing information to investigators, or testifying in a proceeding. The protection is broad: your complaint does not need to cite a specific statute, and it covers internal complaints to a supervisor as well as formal filings with the state. Even threatening to report a worker’s immigration status in response to a wage complaint qualifies as illegal retaliation.12New York State Senate. New York Labor Law 215 – Penalties and Civil Action
If the Department of Labor finds retaliation occurred, it can order reinstatement, lost wages, and liquidated damages up to $20,000, on top of civil penalties ranging from $1,000 to $10,000 per violation. For repeat offenders within six years, the penalty cap rises to $20,000 per violation.12New York State Senate. New York Labor Law 215 – Penalties and Civil Action Federal law adds a separate layer of protection under Section 15(a)(3) of the FLSA, with remedies that include reinstatement and liquidated damages equal to lost wages.13U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 77A: Prohibiting Retaliation Under the Fair Labor Standards Act
If you are owed overtime and worried about pushback, the law is tilted heavily in your favor. Employers who retaliate end up paying for the original wage violation and the retaliation separately, and the retaliation damages often exceed the unpaid wages that started the dispute.