Temp Agency Worker Rights: Who Owes Your Pay?

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Disclaimer: This article is general information for educational purposes only and is not legal or tax advice. Wage laws vary by state and change often; check with the U.S. Department of Labor, your state labor agency, or a qualified employment lawyer about your own situation.

Temp agency worker rights start with one fact: you are an employee. If you’re non-exempt, federal overtime and minimum wage rules cover you the same as anyone the client hired directly. The staffing agency is your employer, and the company where you do the work can also be legally responsible for your pay.

What makes temp work different is that you have two bosses. The agency cuts the check, but you badge in on the client’s clock and answer to the client’s supervisor. That split creates three pay problems permanent employees rarely face:

Overtime that gets split in two when one agency sends you to two clients in the same week.
Hours recorded in a system you can’t see, then handed from the client to the agency’s payroll.
Leave and minimum-pay rules that follow the agency, not the job site.

You have plenty of company. Temporary help services firms had about 2.5 million jobs on payroll in September 2026, based on preliminary Bureau of Labor Statistics figures. This guide shows who is on the hook for each problem and what to do when a paycheck comes up short.

Who Is Your Employer When a Temp Agency Places You?

The staffing agency is. It hired you and it runs payroll. Even the Department of Labor’s April 2026 proposal treats that as a given: in a typical staffing arrangement, the worker is plainly the agency’s employee. The open question is whether the client company also employs you.

The answer turns on the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Under 29 U.S.C. 203(g), “employ” includes “to suffer or permit to work.” A client that sets your schedule, supervises you on the floor, and controls your working conditions can become a joint employer, sharing responsibility for your wages with the agency.

Where the federal joint employer rule stands

Most guides treat joint employment as settled, but at the federal level it isn’t.

2020: DOL issued a joint employer rule. On September 8, 2020, a federal court in New York (New York v. Scalia) vacated its vertical joint employment standard, the part that covers staffing.
2021: DOL rescinded the rest. The regulation, 29 CFR Part 791, was removed from the Code of Federal Regulations effective October 5, 2021.
April 23, 2026: DOL published a proposed rule with a four-factor test. It asks whether the client hires or fires you, substantially supervises and controls your schedule or working conditions, sets your rate and method of pay, and keeps your employment records. Comments closed June 22, 2026.

A proposal isn’t law. Until DOL publishes a final rule in the Federal Register, courts apply their own multi-factor tests (the proposal itself acknowledges DOL hasn’t been applying one uniform standard). Whether the client is also your employer depends on the facts and on your state.

FMLA is the exception

Family and Medical Leave Act rules still have a live joint employment regulation. Under 29 CFR 825.106, joint employment will ordinarily be found when a temporary placement agency supplies workers to a client. The agency is usually the primary employer, responsible for required notices, granting leave, and keeping up health benefits. The FMLA eligibility calculator checks whether you qualify in the first place.

Do Temp Workers Get Overtime? Yes, and Here’s Who Pays

Yes. A non-exempt temp earns time-and-a-half for every hour over 40 in a workweek, exactly like a direct hire, under the same FLSA overtime rules. Because the agency runs payroll, the agency owes that overtime first.

The client can end up sharing the bill in two ways.

Federally, if the client is a joint employer

When two businesses jointly employ you, 29 CFR 778.103 says “all hours worked by the employee for such employers during the workweek must be totaled” for overtime purposes. Whether a given client counts as a joint employer is decided case by case.

By state statute

Two states make the client share wage liability directly, whatever the federal answer, and a third does so for one rule:

California (Labor Code 2810.3): client employers share civil liability for wages and workers’ compensation with the labor contractor. This applies to clients with 25 or more workers and 6 or more supplied workers, for work in the client’s usual course of business on its premises.
Illinois (Day and Temporary Labor Services Act, not professional or clerical placements): the Illinois Department of Labor says clients share legal responsibility and liability with the agency for paying wages.
New Jersey (Temporary Workers’ Bill of Rights, designated job categories only): the client is jointly and severally liable with the agency for violations of the law’s equal pay and benefits rule (N.J.S.A. 34:8D-7), so either one can be held responsible for the full amount. For other unpaid wages, this law doesn’t make the client share the bill.

Show-up pay when you’re sent out and not used

Say the agency sends you across town at 6 a.m. and the client says it doesn’t need you today. Federal law doesn’t guarantee show-up pay for that trip, but two state temp laws do.

For covered workers in Illinois (820 ILCS 175/30) and under New Jersey’s Temporary Workers’ Bill of Rights, an agency that sends you to a client who doesn’t put you to work must pay 4 hours at the agreed rate. If the agency places you at another worksite during the same shift, the minimum drops to 2 hours, on top of pay for the hours you work at the new site.

These temp-only laws are separate from the general reporting-time rules in our show-up pay guide, which is why that guide lists New Jersey’s general rule as 1 hour at minimum wage and leaves Illinois out. The reporting time pay calculator handles the general-rule math.

Waiting at the agency’s hall before dispatch is murkier, and no federal regulation addresses it directly. The general test (29 CFR 785.15 and 785.16) asks whether you were engaged to wait or free to use the time as your own; see our guide to on-call and waiting time.

Staffing Agency Overtime: One Agency, Two Clients, One Week

This trap is the easiest one to miss. One agency is one employer. Under 29 CFR 778.103, the employer must “total all the hours worked by the employee for him in that workweek (even though two or more unrelated job assignments may have been performed).” Every hour at every client counts toward one 40-hour threshold.

A worked example

Here’s one workweek with one agency, in a state with no daily overtime. Every day is 8 hours or less and there’s no seventh consecutive day, so only the federal weekly rule applies. States with daily overtime can add more.

This week	Client A (warehouse)	Client B (event setup)	Week total
Days	Mon to Thu, 8 hours each	Fri and Sat, 7 hours each	6 days
Hours	32	14	46
Rate	$18.00	$20.00	Blended
Straight-time pay	$576.00	$280.00	$856.00

Because the two clients pay different rates, overtime is based on a blended (weighted-average) regular rate under 29 CFR 778.115:

Regular rate: $856.00 / 46 hours = $18.6087 per hour (keep the extra decimals)
Half-time premium per overtime hour: $18.6087 x 0.5 = $9.3043
Overtime premium owed: 6 hours x $9.3043 = $55.83
Correct pay for the week: $856.00 + $55.83 = $911.83

Here’s where payroll gets it wrong. Client A’s timesheet shows 32 hours. Client B’s shows 14. Neither crosses 40, so payroll pays $856.00 flat. That check is $55.83 short for one week, and the gap repeats every week the pattern does.

Our blended overtime rate guide explains the method, and the weighted-average overtime calculator runs your own numbers.

Two different agencies are two separate employers

Two different agencies each count to 40 on their own. The hours don’t combine unless the agencies jointly employ you, which is uncommon. Our guide to working two jobs and overtime covers that general rule.

DOL Opinion Letter FLSA2025-05 (September 30, 2025) shows when separate businesses can combine hours. A restaurant and a members’ club with common operations both employed the same hostess. DOL said her hours at both must be combined for overtime and that the two are “jointly and severally liable for all aspects of FLSA compliance.” The letter’s own illustration: a cashier who works 30 hours a week at each of two coordinating stores is owed 20 hours of overtime premium, collectible from either store. It turned on its own facts and wasn’t a staffing case, so treat it as an illustration only.

The part that isn’t settled

The agency owes overtime on your combined hours; that part is settled. What’s unsettled federally is whether each client also shares liability for overtime that exists only because of hours you worked at the other client. DOL’s April 2026 proposal would make joint employers jointly and severally liable with hours aggregated, but a proposal isn’t law unless DOL finalizes it. Take the claim to the agency first.

Travel between assignments

If the agency requires you to report to its office or a pickup point to get instructions or equipment, the ride from there to the worksite counts. Under 29 CFR 785.38, that travel “must be counted as hours worked regardless of contract, custom, or practice.” The same regulation counts travel from job site to job site during the workday. See our travel time pay guide and travel time pay calculator.

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When Your Hours Live in the Client’s System

A permanent employee’s hours go from one time clock to one payroll department. A temp’s hours run a relay:

You clock in on the client’s badge reader or kiosk, or a client supervisor signs your timesheet.
The client sends those hours to the agency.
The agency pays you from whatever the client sent.

Errors creep in at every handoff. A supervisor forgets to approve Friday. The client’s system rounds punches or auto-deducts a break you didn’t take. And you often can’t see either system.

The FLSA doesn’t care whether the client approved the time. Under 29 CFR 785.11, “Work not requested but suffered or permitted is work time.” Our guides to working off the clock and time clock rules for hourly employees go deeper.

States that force the records into the open

A few states make the agency or the client show their work:

Illinois: your agency paystub must list the hours you worked at each client’s worksite each day. If you’re a single-day worker, the client must give you a work verification form at the end of the day with the date, your name, the work location, and your hours.
New Jersey: the client must send the agency your hours-worked information no later than 7 days after the last day of the workweek.
California: a temp agency’s hire notice under Labor Code 2810.5 must name the client you’ll work for, with its address and phone number. Temp-agency employees are also generally paid weekly (Labor Code 201.3).
Massachusetts: the written job-order notice under the Temporary Workers Right to Know Act (M.G.L. c.149, sec. 159C) must tell you your pay rate and whether overtime may occur.

Your own log is the backstop

Wherever you work, the best protection is a record you control. If your employer’s records are wrong or missing, the Mt. Clemens burden-shifting rule lets a reasonable reconstruction of your hours count. Our guide on how to prove hours worked without a time clock explains how that works.

A few habits make that record hard to argue with:

Log every shift start, end, and break the same day.
Photograph the kiosk screen or sign-in sheet when you clock out.
Keep every assignment notice and job order.

If you track shifts in an app like TimeClock44, log the agency as one job, with the week start day matching the agency’s workweek. Separate jobs per client would give you two separate 40-hour counts, the exact error in the example above. Use a per-shift rate override when a client pays a different rate, and a shift note to name the client. That works on the free tier, and a PDF or CSV export gives you a record to check each paystub against. The app doesn’t compute the blended regular rate, so run mixed-rate weeks through the weighted-average calculator.

Temp Worker Rights by State: Equal Pay, Sick Leave, and Show-Up Pay

Some temp worker guides promise “equal pay after 12 weeks.” That’s a British rule, from the UK’s Agency Workers Regulations. There is no US federal equal-pay rule for temps. Only state laws, such as those in Illinois and New Jersey, create one.

Illinois: Day and Temporary Labor Services Act

The Illinois law (820 ILCS 175) covers day and temporary laborers. It doesn’t cover professional or clerical placements. Covered workers get:

The 4-hour and 2-hour show-up pay rules described above
No charge for rides the agency or the client provides
Paid safety training
The right to refuse an assignment at a strike site
Equal pay after more than 720 hours at the same client within a 12-month period (hours count from April 1, 2024): at least the straight-time rate of a comparable directly hired employee, or of the lowest-paid direct hire if there’s no comparable employee

The law’s equal-benefits provisions have been litigated in federal court, so check their current status before relying on them.

New Jersey: Temporary Workers’ Bill of Rights

New Jersey’s law (N.J.S.A. 34:8D-1 et seq.) covers only designated job categories: food preparation and serving, building and grounds cleaning and maintenance, construction laborers and helpers, production, transportation and material moving, installation, maintenance, and repair, personal care and service, and protective service. Office temps generally fall outside it. Covered workers get:

Pay and benefits at least equal to the average rate of pay and average cost of benefits for the client’s employees doing substantially similar work, with the client jointly and severally liable for this rule
The same 4-hour and 2-hour show-up pay rules
No fees for transportation, check cashing, background checks, or drug tests
A rebuttable presumption of retaliation if you’re fired within 90 days of exercising your rights
A 6-year statute of limitations

The Third Circuit declined to block the law in July 2024.

California

Covered client employers share liability for wages and workers’ compensation (Labor Code 2810.3, described above), but you must give the client 30 days’ notice of the violations before suing.

California’s paid sick leave law covers staffing-agency employees, and accrued unused leave is restored if the same employer rehires you within 12 months.

Massachusetts

The Temporary Workers Right to Know Act requires a written job-order notice and bans registration fees. Transportation fees are capped at the actual cost and at 3% of your daily wages, and refunded in full if there’s no work that day. Massachusetts has no temp-specific 4-hour rule; its general reporting pay rule is in the show-up pay guide.

Paid sick leave follows the agency, not the client

New Jersey’s Department of Labor says a temp’s earned sick leave “accrues on the basis of the total time he or she has worked with the temporary help service firm” rather than separately at each client. If you’re rehired within 6 months, the leave is reinstated.

The math barely changes. In the worked example above, 46 hours at New Jersey’s rate of 1 hour per 30 worked earns about 1.53 hours of sick leave that week, whether you count by client or in total. The real risk is a reset. When one assignment ends and the next begins, an agency might treat the gap as a separation, drop your balance, or restart a waiting period. Total-time accrual and the rehire windows (6 months in New Jersey, 12 months in California) are your protection.

For every state’s rules, see our guide to paid sick leave laws by state, and track your balance with the sick leave accrual calculator.

How to Get Paid What You’re Owed

Most temp pay problems come down to lost hours, or to weeks that nobody added up as a whole. When a check comes up short, work through these steps in order.

Check each paystub against your own log. Look at total hours for the workweek, not per client. Then check the overtime rate and any show-up pay you’re owed.
Raise it with the agency in writing first. The agency runs payroll and can fix the check fastest. If the hours came from the client’s system, name the client and the dates in your message.
File a complaint if it isn’t fixed. Contact the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division at 1-866-487-9243, your state labor department, or both. In Illinois, the Department of Labor’s number is 1-877-314-7052. You can name both the agency and the client.
Watch the deadline. Under the FLSA you have 2 years to recover unpaid wages, or 3 years if the violation was willful. New Jersey’s temp law allows 6 years for claims under it.

Our guides to the back pay statute of limitations and how to file a wage claim walk through each step, and the wage claim deadline checker and back pay calculator put numbers on it.

Temps have the same core wage rights as everyone else, but they usually lack one place where all their hours show up. So build that record yourself. Add up the whole week and hold each paystub to it. For the bigger picture, read what your employer must pay you for or browse our free calculators.

References

29 CFR 778.103 (Cornell LII): Requires the employer to total all hours worked in the workweek, including unrelated assignments, and to total hours for joint employers.
29 CFR 778.115 (Cornell LII): The weighted-average regular rate for employees working at two or more rates in one workweek.
29 CFR 785.11 (Cornell LII): Work not requested but suffered or permitted is work time.
29 CFR 785.15 (Cornell LII): Time spent engaged to wait counts as work time.
29 CFR 785.16 (Cornell LII): Off-duty periods when an employee is completely relieved from duty.
29 CFR 785.38 (Cornell LII): Travel from a required reporting place to the worksite, and between job sites, counts as hours worked.
29 CFR 825.106 (Cornell LII): FMLA joint employment, including temporary placement agencies as primary employers.
Federal Register: Joint Employer Status Proposed Rule (April 23, 2026): DOL’s proposed four-factor joint employer test, 91 FR 21878. Proposed only, not final.
Federal Register: Rescission of the Joint Employer Rule (July 30, 2021): DOL’s withdrawal of the 2020 joint employer regulation.
Federal Register: Rescission Effective Date Delay (September 21, 2021): Sets the rescission’s effective date of October 5, 2021.
DOL Opinion Letter FLSA2025-05: A restaurant and a members’ club found to jointly employ a hostess, with her hours combined for overtime.
Illinois Department of Labor: Day and Temporary Labor Services Act Poster: Paystub, equal pay, transportation, and safety training rights for Illinois temps.
Illinois Department of Labor: Day and Temporary Labor FAQ: Work verification forms and shared wage liability for client companies.
Littler: Illinois Court Refuses to Halt Equal Benefits Provisions: Summary of the litigation over the Illinois law’s equal-benefits requirement.
NJDOL: Temporary Workers’ Rights: Covered job categories, equal pay and benefits, show-up pay, fee bans, and retaliation protections.
NJDOL: Temporary Workers’ Bill of Rights: The client’s joint and several liability for the equal pay and benefits rule, and its 7-day deadline to send hours to the agency.
NJDOL: Earned Sick Leave FAQ: How sick leave accrues for temps placed by a temporary help service firm.
Third Circuit, No. 23-2419 (July 24, 2024): Decision declining to block New Jersey’s Temporary Workers’ Bill of Rights.
California Labor Code 2810.3: Shared wage and workers’ compensation liability for client employers.
California Labor Code 2810.5: Written wage notice at hire, including the client a temp will work for.
California Labor Code 201.3: Weekly pay requirements for temporary services employees.
California DIR: Paid Sick Leave FAQ: Coverage for staffing-agency employees and restoration of leave on rehire.
Massachusetts General Laws c.149, sec. 159C: The Temporary Workers Right to Know Act job-order notice and fee limits.
FRED: All Employees, Temporary Help Services (TEMPHELPS): Monthly BLS payroll jobs data for temporary help services firms.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Do temp workers get overtime?

Yes. A non-exempt temp earns time-and-a-half for every hour over 40 in a workweek under the Fair Labor Standards Act, the same as a directly hired employee. The staffing agency runs payroll, so it owes the overtime first.

Who pays overtime, the temp agency or the company I work at?

The agency runs payroll and owes it first. The client company can also be liable if it counts as a joint employer under federal law, which courts decide on the facts of each case. Two states make clients share wage liability by statute: California (client employers with 25 or more workers and 6 or more agency-supplied workers, for work in their usual course of business) and Illinois (day and temporary labor, not professional or clerical placements). New Jersey's temp law makes the client jointly liable only for its equal pay and benefits rule, in designated job categories.

If my agency sends me to two companies in the same week, do the hours add up?

Yes, when it's the same agency. Under 29 CFR 778.103 the agency must total every hour you worked for it that workweek, even across unrelated assignments, and pay overtime past 40. If the two clients pay different rates, overtime is based on a blended (weighted-average) regular rate under 29 CFR 778.115. Hours at two different agencies usually don't combine.

Can a temp agency pay me less than the company's own employees?

Under federal law, usually yes. There is no US federal equal-pay rule for temps, and the 'equal pay after 12 weeks' rule some guides mention comes from the UK. Illinois requires equal pay after more than 720 hours at the same client within 12 months (day and temporary labor, not professional or clerical placements). New Jersey requires pay and benefits at least equal to the average for the client's employees doing substantially similar work, but only in designated job categories.

Do I get paid if the agency sends me to a job and there's no work?

Not under federal law. Illinois's temp law (day and temporary labor, not professional or clerical placements) and New Jersey's Temporary Workers' Bill of Rights (designated job categories only) require 4 hours' pay at the agreed rate, or 2 hours if the agency places you at another worksite during the same shift. Other states' general reporting-time rules may also apply.

Do temp workers get paid sick leave?

In states with paid sick leave laws, generally yes, through the agency. In New Jersey, a temp's earned sick leave accrues on total time worked for the agency across all clients, and it is reinstated if you're rehired within 6 months. California covers staffing-agency employees and restores unused leave if the same employer rehires you within 12 months.

What if the client didn't approve my timesheet?

Approval isn't the test. Under 29 CFR 785.11, work the employer did not request but suffered or permitted is still work time. Keep your own record of every shift and dispute the missing hours with the agency in writing.

Is the 2026 DOL joint employer rule in effect?

Not unless the Department of Labor finalizes it. DOL published a proposed joint employer rule on April 23, 2026, and the comment period closed June 22, 2026. A proposal isn't law: it applies only once DOL publishes a final rule in the Federal Register, so check there for its status. The earlier federal joint employer regulation was removed in 2021, and until a final rule takes effect, courts apply their own tests.