What Is Overtime in Nevada? Rates, Exemptions, and Filing Claims

Overtime in Nevada is paid at 1.5 times your regular rate of pay once you exceed 8 hours in a workday or 40 hours in a workweek, with the daily trigger applying only if you earn less than $18.00 per hour. That daily rule is what sets Nevada apart from federal law, which counts weekly hours only. The rest depends on what you earn, what kind of work you do, and how your employer calculates your “regular rate.”

When Overtime Kicks In

Nevada splits workers into two groups based on how their hourly pay compares to the state minimum wage. With the minimum at $12.00 per hour, the dividing line is $18.00 (one and a half times the minimum).¹

If you earn less than $18.00 per hour, you get overtime for any hours past 8 in a single workday and any hours past 40 in a workweek. If you earn $18.00 or more, only the 40-hour weekly rule applies to you. The daily trigger doesn’t.¹

There’s one carve-out from the daily rule. If you and your employer genuinely agree to a four-day, ten-hour schedule, working 10 hours in a day doesn’t trigger daily overtime.¹ The agreement has to be mutual. An employer can’t impose a 4/10 schedule and call it agreed to.

Daily and weekly overtime don’t stack. If you work 10 hours Monday and earn 2 hours of daily overtime, those same hours still count toward your weekly 40; you’re not paid overtime twice for the same hour. But the reverse matters too: if you work 10 hours Monday and only 30 total for the week, you still earn those 2 hours of daily overtime even though your weekly total stayed under 40.

How Your Overtime Rate Is Calculated

For a worker paid a flat hourly wage and nothing else, overtime is simple. Multiply the hourly rate by 1.5. Someone earning $16.00 an hour gets $24.00 per overtime hour.

It gets more complicated when there’s additional compensation beyond the base wage. Federal law requires that your “regular rate” include essentially all pay for work performed, with limited exceptions.² Compensation that has to be folded in includes:

Non-discretionary bonuses, meaning any bonus tied to a predetermined formula or criteria such as production targets, safety benchmarks, or attendance. If the employer announced the plan in advance to motivate performance, it counts, whatever the employer labels it.
Shift differentials for working nights, weekends, or less desirable shifts.
Commissions tied to sales or revenue.

A truly discretionary bonus — where the employer decides both whether to pay and how much at the end of the period, with no prior promise — can be excluded. In practice, most bonuses don’t qualify as discretionary because the criteria were announced ahead of time.²

Here’s the math in a realistic case. Say you earn $12.00 per hour and also receive a non-discretionary performance bonus that works out to $5.60 per hour across the 50 hours you worked in a week. Your straight-time pay for the week is $880.00: 50 hours at $12.00, plus 50 hours at $5.60. Divide $880.00 by 50 hours and your regular rate is $17.60. The overtime premium owed on your 10 overtime hours is half the regular rate ($8.80) times 10, or $88.00, on top of the straight-time pay you already received.² This is where employers most often shortchange workers, either by leaving bonuses out of the overtime calculation entirely or by applying the premium only to the base rate.

Hours That Count Toward Overtime

Overtime disputes often turn less on the rate and more on which hours get counted. Nevada follows federal rules on this, and some of them aren’t intuitive.

Travel Time

Your normal commute between home and your regular workplace isn’t work time. Travel between job sites during the workday always is.³ If you’re sent out of town for a one-day assignment, the travel to and from counts, minus what you’d normally spend commuting. On overnight trips, travel that falls within your usual working hours counts, even on days you’d otherwise have off.

Training and Meetings

Time at trainings, lectures, and meetings is compensable unless all four of these conditions are met: the training falls outside your regular hours, attendance is truly voluntary, the content isn’t directly related to your current job, and you do no productive work during it.⁴ Fail any one of them and the time counts. Mandatory safety training during your shift fails three of them and is clearly work time.

On-Call Time

On-call time comes down to how much your freedom is restricted. If you have to stay on the employer’s premises or so close that you can’t realistically use the time for your own purposes, you’re working.⁵ If you just need to be reachable by phone, that’s not work time. Most arrangements fall somewhere between, and the answer depends on how quickly you have to respond and how much your personal life is actually curtailed.

Who Doesn’t Get Overtime

Several categories of workers are exempt from overtime under federal law, Nevada law, or both.

Executive, Administrative, and Professional Workers

The most common exemptions cover salaried white-collar workers who meet both a salary test and a duties test. The federal salary threshold currently being enforced is $684 per week, or $35,568 annually.⁶ Earning above that doesn’t make you exempt on its own. You also have to do the kind of work the exemption covers:

Executive: you manage a department or the business, direct the work of at least two other employees, and have real authority over hiring and firing.
Administrative: you do office or non-manual work tied to management or business operations, and you exercise independent judgment on significant matters.
Professional: your work requires advanced knowledge in a specialized field, typically from prolonged study.

Nevada’s definition of “professional” is narrower than the federal one. Under NRS 608.0116, you qualify only if you’re licensed or certified by the state and practicing law or a profession regulated under specific chapters of Nevada law, covering fields like architecture, engineering, accounting, and healthcare.⁷ A worker who meets the federal professional test but doesn’t hold one of those Nevada licenses is not exempt under state law.

Computer Workers

Systems analysts, programmers, software engineers, and similar workers can be exempt if their primary work involves designing, developing, testing, or analyzing computer systems or programs. Hourly computer workers need to earn at least $27.63 per hour to qualify.⁸ Help desk and hardware repair work generally doesn’t qualify.

Other Nevada Exemptions

NRS 608.018 also exempts outside salespeople who regularly work away from the employer’s place of business, agricultural workers, retail or service employees who earn more than 1.5 times minimum wage and get more than half their pay from commissions, and workers covered by collective bargaining agreements with different overtime terms.¹

If You’re Called an Independent Contractor

None of these protections apply to a genuine independent contractor. But whether you’re actually a contractor turns on the economic reality of the relationship, not what your contract calls you. Federal enforcement looks at who controls how the work gets done, whether you have a real opportunity for profit or loss based on your own initiative, how permanent the relationship is, and whether your work is integrated into the company’s core operations.⁹ Misclassification is one of the most common ways employers avoid paying overtime, and a worker labeled a contractor who functions like an employee can still bring a claim.

If You Weren’t Paid Correctly

You have more than one path, and they aren’t mutually exclusive.

Filing With the Nevada Labor Commissioner

The Labor Commissioner investigates unpaid wage complaints, including overtime.¹⁰ You submit a wage claim through the Commissioner’s online portal; a formal wage claim requires your identifying information, unlike a general complaint. The agency investigates, gathers documentation from both sides, and works toward resolution. Raising the issue with your employer first is worth trying, but if that stalls, don’t delay filing.

Filing a Federal Complaint

You can also call the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division at 1-866-487-9243. Federal complaints are confidential, and your employer will not be told who filed.¹¹ The WHD decides whether to open an investigation and runs it from there.

Keep Your Own Records

Nevada requires employers to maintain wage records for at least two years.¹² Federal law requires employers to keep payroll records for three years and basic timekeeping records for two.¹³ Keep your own copies of pay stubs, time sheets, and any written exchanges about your schedule. If a dispute arises and the employer’s records are incomplete, your personal documentation becomes the backbone of the case.

If Your Employer Retaliates

Under the FLSA, it’s illegal for an employer to fire you, cut your hours, demote you, or otherwise punish you for raising an overtime issue, whether you filed with an agency or just complained internally.¹⁴ Nevada law separately makes it unlawful to intimidate or penalize an employee for testifying in a wage investigation.¹⁵ Remedies for retaliation include reinstatement, back pay, and an equal amount in liquidated damages.

Deadlines

Don’t sit on an overtime claim. Under federal law, you have two years from each violation to file, or three years if the employer’s failure to pay was willful (meaning they knew the law required overtime and chose not to pay).¹⁶ Nevada allows a civil lawsuit for unpaid wages within two years of the employer’s failure to pay.¹⁷ These clocks run from each missed paycheck, not from the day you leave the job, so every week you wait is a week of back pay you lose access to.

1
Nevada Legislature. Nevada Revised Statutes 608.018 – Compensation for Overtime Requirement Exceptions
2
U.S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division. FLSA Opinion Letter FLSA2026-2
3
U.S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division. Fact Sheet 22 Hours Worked Under the Fair Labor Standards Act
4
eCFR. 29 CFR 785.27 – General
5
eCFR. Part 785 Subpart C – Waiting Time
6
U.S. Department of Labor. Final Rule Restoring and Extending Overtime Protections
7
Nevada Legislature. Nevada Revised Statutes 608.0116 – Professional Defined
8
eCFR. General Rule for Computer Employees – 29 CFR 541.400
9
U.S. Department of Labor. Notice of Proposed Rule Employee or Independent Contractor Status Under the Fair Labor Standards Act
10
Office of the Labor Commissioner. Forms for Employees
11
U.S. Department of Labor. How to File a Complaint
12
Nevada Legislature. Nevada Revised Statutes 608.115 – Records of Wages
13
eCFR. Records to Be Kept by Employers – 29 CFR Part 516
14
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 77A Prohibiting Retaliation Under the Fair Labor Standards Act
15
Nevada Legislature. Nevada Revised Statutes Chapter 608 – Compensation Wages and Hours
16
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 USC 255 – Statute of Limitations
17
Nevada Legislature. Nevada Revised Statutes 608.135 – Civil Action