Time and a Half Calculator

What this page computes, and what it does not decide

This page multiplies. You give it an hourly rate and a split between regular and overtime hours, and it returns the premium rate, the two pay figures and their total. That is the whole of it.

It applies no threshold. There is no 40-hour rule inside the calculator, no daily limit, and no test of who is covered. Type 50 regular hours and it returns 50 hours of straight time, because that is the split you asked it to price. Deciding where the line between regular and overtime hours falls is your input, not its output.

Whether a premium is owed at all turns on jurisdiction and on how a job is classified, and this page has no access to either. For the rules rather than the arithmetic, the overtime calculator sets out the federal position and its sources.

Where the one and a half comes from

The multiplier is not a convention someone settled on. It is written into the United States Fair Labor Standards Act, at 29 U.S.C. 207(a)(1), which requires compensation for hours beyond forty in a workweek at a rate not less than one and one-half times the regular rate at which he is employed.

Two phrases in that sentence do a lot of work. Not less than makes 1.5 a floor rather than a fixed figure, so a contract or a state rule can sit above it and often does. Regular rate is a defined term rather than the base wage, which is the subject of its own section below. Outside the United States the position differs by country, so treat the 1.5 here as the arithmetic you asked for rather than as a statement about your entitlement.

Working it out by hand

There is a faster route than reaching for 1.5. Halve the rate and add it back.

1. Halve the hourly rate. At $18.00, half is $9.00.
2. Add it back. 18 + 9 = $27.00 is the premium rate.
3. Multiply by the overtime hours. 27 × 6 = $162.00.
4. Price the regular hours separately. 18 × 40 = $720.00.
5. Add the two. 720 + 162 = $882.00 gross.

The halving step is worth the habit because it works in your head at any wage, and because it makes the structure visible: the premium is the half, and time and a half is the whole plus the half.

Time-and-a-half rates at common hourly wages

Each figure is the wage plus half the wage.

The regular rate is not always the base wage

This is the part that most often makes a payslip disagree with a quick calculation. Under the federal rule the figure that gets multiplied is the regular rate, which is generally total straight-time earnings for the week divided by the hours worked, not simply the number on the offer letter.

A week of 40 hours at $20 with a $40 production bonus works out at (800 + 40) ÷ 40 = $21.00 an hour, so the premium rate is $31.50 rather than $30.00. Shift differentials behave the same way. If your week included anything of that kind, work the regular rate out first and enter that figure at the top of this page.

Edge cases

• Part hours. Enter them as decimals: 0.5 for thirty minutes, 0.25 for a quarter, 0.333 for twenty minutes. The multiplication does not require whole hours.
• More than 40 regular hours. The page will price all of them at straight time, because that is the split you gave it. It is not a bug and it is not a recommendation; it is the arithmetic of your input.
• A multiplier that is not 1.5. Double time, and any contractual premium above the floor, belong on the overtime calculator, which takes the multiplier as an input.
• Pay periods longer than a week. The federal premium is computed per workweek. A fortnightly or monthly slip is the sum of separate weeks, so adding all the hours together and splitting once will not reproduce it.
• Zero overtime hours. Leave the field at 0 and the page reduces to a plain rate-times-hours calculation, which is a perfectly good use of it.

Common mistakes with the 1.5 multiplier

• Multiplying the whole week by 1.5. The premium applies to the overtime hours only. The regular hours stay at the regular rate.
• Adding the premium twice. Time and a half is 1.5 times the rate in total, not the rate plus 1.5 times the rate. Ten hours at $20 is $300, not $500.
• Using the base wage when the regular rate is higher. See the section above. This is the single most common reason a hand calculation lands below a payslip.
• Expecting a net figure. Everything here is gross. Tax and deductions come off afterwards and are not modelled on this page.

This page and the overtime calculator

They are not the same tool and they are not competing.

• This page is the arithmetic of the 1.5 multiplier: what one and a half of a given wage is, what the regular rate that gets multiplied means, and how part hours and bonuses land.
• The overtime calculator takes the multiplier as an input, so it handles double time and contractual premiums, and it sets out the federal rules, the daily-versus-weekly question and the tax treatment. It is at /overtime-calculator.

Between them they cover the rate and the rules without either one pretending to do the other job.

Your figures stay in the page

Your hourly rate and your hours are processed by this page in your browser. They are not sent to a server, not stored after you close the tab, and not visible to anyone else. There is no account and nothing to sign up for.

Sources

• 29 U.S.C. 207(a)(1), Fair Labor Standards Act, via the Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute. The multiplier is the statute own wording: compensation for hours beyond forty in a workweek at a rate not less than one and one-half times the regular rate at which he is employed. Read in full and quoted on 2026-08-21.

The sibling overtime page cites the interpretive regulation at 29 CFR 778.107 instead. This page cites the statute, at a host that served the text rather than a bot check, because a citation you cannot open is not a citation.