Your Overtime Calculation Cheat Code

One of the mistakes I’ve seen employers make when calculating overtime in a biweekly pay period is to look at the total of 80 hours rather than looking at each week of work separately. For example, if someone works 32 hours one week and 48 hours a second week, they will not pay overtime because the total is 80 hours. However, that is not correct. The employee should be paid for 72 regular hours and eight hours of overtime. Why? Because the law says that employees are required to be paid overtime for any work hours worked over 40 in a week. And my example, in week two, the employee worked eight hours of overtime. Thus should have received overtime for those eight hours.