In Illinois, overtime is any time you work beyond 40 hours in a single workweek, and your employer must pay at least 1.5 times your regular hourly rate for every hour over that line.1Justia. Illinois Code 820 ILCS 105 – Minimum Wage Law The state has no daily overtime trigger, so a long shift on its own does not create overtime. Only the weekly total counts.
What Counts as a Workweek
A workweek under the Illinois Minimum Wage Law is any fixed, recurring block of seven consecutive 24-hour days. It does not have to line up with the calendar week. Your employer picks the start day and has to apply it consistently from week to week.
Two things trip people up. There is no daily overtime limit in Illinois: a 10-hour Monday and a 10-hour Tuesday do not generate overtime if your weekly total stays at 40 or below. And your employer cannot average hours across pay periods. Each workweek stands alone. If you work 50 hours one week and 30 the next, you earned 10 hours of overtime in that first week, period.
On-Call and Waiting Time
Hours you spend on-call or waiting may or may not count toward your 40, depending on how restricted you are. Time spent on the employer’s premises waiting for work counts as hours worked, even if you are doing nothing.2U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet #22: Hours Worked Under the Fair Labor Standards Act The legal line is between being “engaged to wait” (paid) and “waiting to be engaged” (generally not). A receptionist reading between visitors is engaged to wait.
On-call time at home usually does not count if you can use the time as you wish. But tight restrictions, like a short required response window or having to stay inside a small geographic radius, can make that time compensable even though you are not at the workplace.
How Your Overtime Pay Is Calculated
Every hour past 40 is paid at 1.5 times your regular rate.1Justia. Illinois Code 820 ILCS 105 – Minimum Wage Law “Regular rate” is not always the same as your base hourly wage. It has to include non-discretionary bonuses (production, attendance, or safety bonuses), commissions, and shift differentials.3U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet #56C: Bonuses Under the Fair Labor Standards Act Truly discretionary bonuses, like an unexpected holiday gift, are excluded.
To find the regular rate, add all qualifying earnings for the week and divide by total hours worked. If you earn $20 an hour and work 44 hours with no bonuses, your regular rate is $20 and your overtime rate is $30. You would earn $800 for the first 40 hours plus $120 for the four overtime hours, totaling $920.
As of 2026, the Illinois minimum wage is $15 per hour, which puts the overtime floor for a minimum-wage worker at $22.50.4Illinois Department of Labor. Minimum Wage Law
When You Work Two Different Rates
If you do two kinds of work for the same employer at different hourly rates in one week, your regular rate is the weighted average.5U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet #23: Overtime Pay Requirements of the FLSA Say you work 25 hours at $18 and 20 hours at $22 in one week. Your total straight-time earnings are $890 and your blended rate is $890 รท 45 = $19.78. The overtime premium on the five extra hours is half of $19.78, or $9.89 per hour, added on top of the straight-time pay you already earned for those hours.
Who Is Covered
The Illinois Minimum Wage Law applies to most hourly workers in the state, but only to employers with at least four employees, not counting the owner’s spouse, parents, or children.1Justia. Illinois Code 820 ILCS 105 – Minimum Wage Law Very small family-run operations can fall outside the state rule.
Even then, you may still be covered by the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, which applies to businesses with at least $500,000 in annual revenue or to individual employees involved in interstate commerce. When both laws apply, your employer has to follow whichever is more favorable to you.6U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet #17A: Exemption for Executive, Administrative, Professional, Computer and Outside Sales Employees
Workers Who Do Not Get Overtime
Some employees are exempt from overtime no matter how many hours they work. Illinois mostly tracks the federal FLSA exemptions, with a few state-specific additions.7Illinois General Assembly. Illinois Code 820 ILCS 105/4a
Executive, Administrative, and Professional Workers
The broadest exemptions cover these three white-collar categories. To be exempt, an employee has to meet both a salary test and a duties test.8U.S. Department of Labor. Earnings Thresholds for Executive, Administrative, and Professional Employees
The salary test requires a guaranteed minimum of $684 per week ($35,568 per year), regardless of the quality or quantity of work in a given pay period. The U.S. Department of Labor tried to raise this threshold in 2024, but a federal court struck down the increase, so the $684 figure still controls.
Earning a salary alone is not enough. The duties side has to fit as well:
- Executive work means managing the business or a recognized department, directing at least two full-time employees, and having real authority (or real influence) over hiring and firing.
- Administrative work means office or non-manual work tied directly to business operations or management, with independent judgment on significant decisions.
- Professional work means work requiring advanced knowledge in a field of science or learning typically acquired through prolonged, specialized education, or creative work requiring invention or originality.
Workers earning at least $107,432 per year face a simplified duties test. They are exempt if they do office or non-manual work and regularly perform at least one duty that would qualify under the executive, administrative, or professional categories. The $107,432 figure includes salary plus non-discretionary bonuses and commissions, but not fringe benefits like health insurance or retirement.9U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet #17H: Highly-Compensated Employees and the Part 541 Exemption
Other Exempt Groups
Illinois law also excludes several additional categories from overtime:7Illinois General Assembly. Illinois Code 820 ILCS 105/4a
- Auto, truck, and farm equipment salespeople and mechanics at a dealership.
- Retail or service commissioned employees who earn more than half their pay from commissions and whose regular rate exceeds 1.5 times the minimum wage.
- Outside salespeople whose primary duty is making sales away from the employer’s place of business.
- Certain government employees excluded from the FLSA’s definition of “employee.”
- Employees who voluntarily swap shifts with a coworker at the same employer.
- Crew members on uninspected towing vessels operating in Illinois navigable waters.
Job titles do not decide exempt status. If your actual day-to-day work does not match the duties test for the exemption your employer is claiming, you are entitled to overtime regardless of what the position is called.
If You Were Not Paid the Overtime You Earned
Illinois lets an underpaid employee sue to recover three times the amount owed, plus attorney’s fees and court costs.10Illinois General Assembly. Illinois Code 820 ILCS 105/12 On top of those treble damages, the employer owes an additional 5% of the unpaid amount for each month the wages remain outstanding. The Illinois Department of Labor can also pursue the employer on its own; a willful, repeated, or reckless violation adds up to 20% of the underpayment plus a flat $1,500 penalty. You cannot waive your right to overtime, and no private agreement to work for less than the required rate is a valid defense.
You have three years from the date of the underpayment to file a lawsuit under the Illinois Minimum Wage Law. Waiting past that cutoff means losing the right to recover, no matter how clear the violation. A broader unpaid-wages claim framed under the Wage Payment and Collection Act has a shorter one-year deadline to file with the Department of Labor,11Illinois Department of Labor. Wage Payment and Collection Act FAQ so moving quickly protects the widest range of options.
To file, you submit a complaint to the Illinois Department of Labor, either online through its portal or on a paper form by email or mail.12Illinois Department of Labor. File a Workplace Complaint Workers in Chicago file instead with the Chicago Business Affairs and Consumer Protection Department, and workers in Cook County outside Chicago file with the Cook County Commission on Human Rights. Pay stubs, W-2s or 1099s, your own records of hours worked, and any written communications about your pay all strengthen the claim. If your employer kept sloppy or missing records, that lack of documentation generally works in your favor.