To calculate work hours under the FLSA, fix a seven-day workweek, add up every minute the employee spent on compensable activity inside it, convert those minutes to decimals, and pay one-and-a-half times the regular rate on anything above 40 hours. The math is simple arithmetic. The judgment calls are about which minutes count.
Start by Fixing the Workweek
A workweek under federal law is a fixed, regularly recurring period of 168 hours, meaning seven consecutive 24-hour days. It can start on any day at any hour, and it doesn’t have to line up with the calendar week.1eCFR. 29 CFR 778.105 – Determining the Workweek Once set, that start time stays put. An employer can change it only if the change is permanent and not designed to dodge overtime.
Each workweek stands alone. You cannot average hours across two weeks to smooth out a heavy one. Fifty hours one week followed by thirty the next does not net to two 40-hour weeks; the first week still owes ten hours of overtime.
Decide Which Minutes Count
Federal regulations define hours worked broadly: all time an employee is required to be on duty, on the employer’s premises, or at a prescribed workplace.2eCFR. 29 CFR Part 785 – Hours Worked Several categories cause most of the disputes.
Preparation and Cleanup
Activities tied closely to the main job count as paid time. A factory worker oiling and cleaning a machine before production, or a healthcare worker putting on required protective gear, is working. So is the corresponding cleanup at shift’s end.2eCFR. 29 CFR Part 785 – Hours Worked
Waiting and On-Call Time
Waiting that is part of the job is compensable. A firefighter waiting for a call, a receptionist waiting for visitors, an employee required to stay on the premises or close enough that they can’t use the time for their own purposes: all working.2eCFR. 29 CFR Part 785 – Hours Worked On-call time where the employee is free to live their life and simply needs to be reachable usually isn’t compensable, but the answer turns on how restrictive the conditions are.
Rest Breaks and Meal Periods
Short rest breaks of 5 to 20 minutes are paid time and cannot be deducted from the employee’s total.3eCFR. 29 CFR 785.18 – Rest Meal periods of 30 minutes or more are unpaid only if the employee is completely relieved of all duties. An office worker eating at their desk to answer phones is working through lunch, and that time must be paid.4eCFR. 29 CFR 785.19 – Meal
Travel
A normal commute doesn’t count. Travel between job sites during the workday does, and so does travel that is itself part of the employee’s principal duties.5U.S. Department of Labor. Travel Time A worker who answers required emails or takes required calls during an otherwise personal commute turns that time compensable.2eCFR. 29 CFR Part 785 – Hours Worked
Training and Meetings
Time in lectures, meetings, and training programs is compensable unless all four of these are true: the session is outside normal work hours, attendance is voluntary, the content isn’t directly related to the employee’s job, and the employee does no other work during it.6U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 22 – Hours Worked Under the Fair Labor Standards Act Miss any one condition and the time is paid.
The De Minimis Boundary
Truly insignificant fragments of time that can’t practically be recorded may be disregarded. This is narrower than many employers assume. Courts have held that an employer cannot set an arbitrary cutoff and ignore small increments that are capable of being tracked.7U.S. Department of Labor. elaws – FLSA Hours Worked Advisor – Recording Hours Worked The doctrine is for genuinely uncertain, hard-to-capture seconds, not a license to trim minutes off every shift.
Convert Minutes to Decimals
Payroll systems generally need time in decimal form. Divide minutes by 60. Fifteen minutes becomes 0.25, thirty becomes 0.50, forty-five becomes 0.75. An employee who works 8 hours and 12 minutes has a decimal total of 8.20, because 12 รท 60 = 0.20.
Common intervals:
- 5 minutes: 0.08
- 10 minutes: 0.17
- 15 minutes: 0.25
- 20 minutes: 0.33
- 30 minutes: 0.50
- 45 minutes: 0.75
A one-minute error repeated across five days and fifty-two weeks compounds into real money, so the conversion is worth doing carefully.
Apply Rounding, If You Use It, Correctly
Federal regulations permit employers to round recorded clock times to simplify payroll. Acceptable increments are 5 minutes, one-tenth of an hour (6 minutes), or a quarter of an hour (15 minutes).8eCFR. 29 CFR 785.48 – Use of Time Clocks Rounding is accepted only if it stays neutral over time.
Quarter-hour rounding follows what’s often called the seven-minute rule. Time from 1 to 7 minutes past a quarter-hour mark rounds down; time from 8 to 14 minutes rounds up. A clock-in at 8:07 records as 8:00; a clock-in at 8:08 records as 8:15.9U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 53 – The Health Care Industry and Hours Worked The catch: rounding must cut both ways. An employer that always rounds in its own favor violates the FLSA.
Add the Week and Figure Overtime
Once each day’s hours are in decimal form, add them for the workweek total. Federal law sets overtime at 40 hours in a single workweek. Every hour beyond that is paid at least one-and-a-half times the employee’s regular rate.10Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 USC 207 – Maximum Hours
Say a worker logs 8.20, 8.50, 9.00, 8.75, and 10.80 hours across five days. The total is 45.25 hours. The first 40 pay at the regular rate; the remaining 5.25 pay at 1.5 times that rate.
The Regular Rate Is Not Just the Hourly Wage
The “regular rate” used to compute overtime must include nondiscretionary bonuses, shift differentials, and certain other forms of compensation.11eCFR. 29 CFR 778.209 – Method of Inclusion of Bonus in Regular Rate If an employee earns $20 an hour plus a $200 weekly production bonus, the regular rate is higher than $20. Basing overtime on the base hourly figure alone underpays the employee and creates liability.
Watch for State Daily Overtime
Federal law measures overtime weekly only. Several states, including California, Alaska, Colorado, and Nevada, also require overtime once a worker exceeds a set number of hours in a single day, typically eight. Employers in those states track daily and weekly totals both, and pay whichever produces the higher amount. Rules differ by state, so check your state labor department for specifics.
This Whole Calculation Is for Non-Exempt Employees
Everything above applies to non-exempt workers. The FLSA exempts executive, administrative, and professional employees who clear both a salary test and a duties test. As of 2026, the salary threshold is $684 per week ($35,568 annually), the 2019 rule that stayed in effect after a federal court vacated the Department of Labor’s 2024 attempt to raise it.12U.S. Department of Labor. Earnings Thresholds for the Executive, Administrative, and Professional Exemptions The duties side requires that the employee’s primary work fit one of the white-collar categories, with judgment about relative importance and freedom from supervision, not just the percentage of time spent on exempt tasks.13eCFR. 29 CFR Part 541 – Defining and Delimiting the Exemptions for Executive, Administrative, Professional, Computer and Outside Sales Employees Fail either test and the worker is non-exempt, and every hour has to be tracked.
Keep the Records That Prove Your Math
Employers must maintain records of hours worked for every non-exempt employee. Time cards, digital tracking systems, handwritten logs: the FLSA does not require a specific method, but the records must reflect actual time worked.8eCFR. 29 CFR 785.48 – Use of Time Clocks
Retention periods depend on the record. Payroll records showing total hours, wages paid, and deductions must be preserved at least three years from the last date of entry.14eCFR. 29 CFR 516.5 – Records to Be Preserved 3 Years Supplementary records such as daily time cards, work schedules, and wage rate tables must be kept at least two years.15GovInfo. 29 CFR 516.5 – 516.6 Records to Be Preserved
The exposure for getting the numbers wrong is significant. An employer that underpays wages or overtime owes the unpaid amount plus an equal amount in liquidated damages, effectively doubling the bill, along with the employee’s reasonable attorney’s fees and costs.16Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 USC 216 – Penalties Employees generally have two years to file, extended to three where the violation was willful.17Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 USC 255 – Statute of Limitations The arithmetic of hour tracking is easy. The cost of a systematic mistake in it is not.