A workweek sounds like a simple concept until you try to calculate overtime across unusual schedules. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, a workweek is not the calendar week. It's any fixed, recurring seven-day period the employer chooses. That choice matters because overtime is calculated against total hours in the workweek, and choosing the wrong boundaries can either overpay the employee, underpay them, or both. For payroll and HR teams, defining and documenting the workweek is one of the foundational compliance decisions every employer has to make, usually before the first paycheck runs.
How the FLSA Defines a Workweek The FLSA defines a workweek as a fixed and regularly recurring period of 168 hours, which works out to seven consecutive 24-hour periods. The workweek can start on any day of the week at any hour. Sunday at midnight is common, but Tuesday at 7 a.m. is equally valid if that's what the employer establishes. Once set, the workweek applies consistently from one week to the next.
Different workweeks can apply to different classes of employees or different locations, but the workweek for a given employee has to stay consistent. You can't switch the definition to avoid overtime in a given week. The DOL Fact Sheet 23 covers the rules in plain language.
How the Workweek Drives Overtime Calculation For non-exempt employees, hours worked over 40 in a workweek trigger overtime pay at 1.5 times the regular rate. The workweek boundary matters because hours in one workweek can't be averaged with hours in another to avoid overtime. An employee who works 30 hours in one workweek and 50 hours in the next has 10 hours of overtime in the second week, even if the two-week total is only 80 hours.
Several payroll mistakes cluster around workweek miscalculation. Paying overtime only on hours over 80 in a biweekly pay period (instead of over 40 in each workweek). Averaging hours across pay periods. Failing to include all compensable time, including unauthorized overtime that the employer knew or should have known about. Each of these triggers wage-and-hour violations.
What About Weeks That Span Pay Periods? Workweeks and pay periods are separate concepts. A biweekly pay period contains exactly two workweeks. A semimonthly pay period contains workweeks that don't align cleanly with pay period boundaries, which is why most employers on semimonthly pay schedules adopt a specific workweek definition and apply overtime calculations within it, regardless of which pay period the overtime hours fall in.
State Rules That Modify the Federal Workweek Several states have their own overtime triggers layered on top of the federal workweek rule. California requires overtime not just for hours over 40 in a workweek but also for hours over 8 in a single day. Alaska, Nevada, and Puerto Rico have similar daily overtime triggers. Colorado added a daily overtime rule in 2020.
Multi-state employers have to apply the more employee-favorable rule in each jurisdiction. That usually means running the calculation both ways (daily and weekly) and paying the higher result. Some payroll systems handle this automatically; many don't, which is a common source of compliance errors for employers expanding into California.
Setting and Documenting Your Workweek Correctly Pick a workweek that aligns with your operational schedule. For a Monday-through-Friday office, Sunday midnight is a natural boundary. For a 24/7 operation, pick a moment when overall staffing is lowest. Document the choice in writing in your payroll policies and communicate it clearly to employees. Avoid changing the workweek definition without documented business justification.
Verify that your payroll system's workweek configuration matches your documented policy. Audit overtime calculations periodically to catch errors before they compound across a full fiscal year. For more on related concepts, see payroll , pay period , wages , and wage-to-salary .
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