8 and 80 Overtime Calculator

How the 8 and 80 overtime rule works

Section 7(j) of the FLSA, spelled out at 29 CFR 778.601, lets one narrow group of employers swap the 7-day workweek for a fixed, regularly recurring 14-day work period. The eligibility test is residency: the employer has to operate a hospital or an establishment primarily engaged in the care of the sick, the aged, or the mentally ill who reside on the premises. Nursing homes, skilled nursing and intermediate care facilities, assisted living, and residential care qualify. Outpatient clinics, dental and physician offices, ambulatory surgery centers, and most home health agencies do not, because nobody lives there.

Two more conditions attach. There has to be an agreement or understanding with the employee reached before the work is performed, and overtime has to be paid at no less than 1.5 times the regular rate for hours over 8 in a workday and for hours over 80 in the 14-day period. The agreement does not have to be in writing. 29 CFR 778.601(c) is explicit about that, though an unwritten agreement has to be specially recorded under 29 CFR Part 516. Plenty of explainer pages claim a signed document is mandatory; it is not. What the agreement cannot be is retroactive, and an employer is not allowed to flip between the 14-day period and the workweek to cut its overtime bill.

Hospitals adopt 8/80 because of the 12-hour shift. A nurse working three 12s a week puts in 36 hours, which the 40-hour rule treats as ordinary time with no overtime at all. Under 8/80 those same shifts generate 4 overtime hours each, 24 across the period. For the longer version of this, see the guide to FLSA 8 and 80 overtime in healthcare.

The two tests, and why the same hour is never paid twice

The daily test is simple: add up the hours over 8 in each workday. Seven 12-hour shifts give 4 overtime hours a day, so 28 for the week. The period test looks at the whole 14 days and asks how many hours land past 80.

The trap is adding those two answers together. Take a schedule of seven 12-hour shifts in week one and nothing in week two. Total hours are 84, so 4 hours sit above the 80-hour line, and the daily test already produced 28. The naive sum says 32 overtime hours. The correct answer is 28. Those 4 hours over 80 were already paid at a premium as daily overtime, and 29 CFR 778.601(d) lets the employer credit that premium against what is owed under the 80-hour test. Paying it again would be paying twice for one hour.

The arithmetic here is simpler than it sounds: count the hours over 8 in each day, then check whether anything is still above 80 once those daily overtime hours are set aside. Fourteen straight 9-hour days show both parts firing at once. That is 126 total hours and 14 hours of daily overtime, which leaves 112 hours to test against the 80-hour line, so 32 more hours qualify. Total overtime: 14 plus 32, or 46 hours. The reference figure of 46 hours over 80 happens to match that total on this schedule, not because the hours over 80 were added on top of the daily overtime.

8/80 vs the standard 40-hour workweek: which one pays you more

The comparison card splits your 14 days into two separate workweeks, days 1 to 7 and days 8 to 14, and gives each its own 40-hour threshold. The two weeks are never pooled, because under 29 U.S.C. 207(a)(1) each fixed 7-day workweek stands alone and there is no federal daily threshold at all.

Which method wins comes down to how your shifts fall. Three 12s a week is the classic 8/80 win: 24 overtime hours under 8/80, zero under the 40-hour rule, because neither week reaches 40 hours. Pack the same kind of shifts into one week and it flips. Seven 12s in week one with week two off gives 28 overtime hours under 8/80 but 44 under the 40-hour rule, which at a $35 base is $280 more in the 40-hour column.

You do not get to pick the better result after the fact. Your employer fixes the method in advance, and 29 CFR 778.601(c) forbids switching between the two to reduce overtime liability. The comparison is useful for a different reason: it tells you whether your schedule is the kind that 8/80 rewards, which is worth knowing before you agree to it or bid on a shift pattern. One limit to note: this comparison is federal only. It does not model California, Alaska, Nevada, or Colorado daily-overtime rules, so check the overtime rules by state for your own.

What goes into your regular rate under 8/80

The 14-day period replaces the workweek for counting overtime hours and nothing else. Every other regular-rate principle in Part 778 still applies, which means your regular rate is total straight-time pay divided by hours worked, not your base wage. Shift differentials and nondiscretionary bonuses such as attendance, retention, and shift-pickup pay have to go in. Genuinely discretionary gifts stay out.

Here is what that is worth. Ten 12-hour night shifts across the period on a $30 base with a $4 night differential and a $150 attendance bonus comes to 120 hours and 40 overtime hours. Straight-time pay for the period is 120 hours at $34, plus the $150 bonus, so $4,230, and the regular rate is $35.25 an hour. Overtime runs at $52.88. Multiply the $30 base by 1.5 instead and those 40 overtime hours pay $1,800 rather than $2,115, which is $315 short. That one shortcut turns up all over DIY 8/80 spreadsheets, and on more than a few real pay stubs.

Checking your own stub takes four steps. Find the total hours for the period, work out the daily overtime yourself, confirm the regular rate matches your differential and bonus, then compare the overtime hours against the figure above. If it comes up short, the FLSA back-pay window runs 2 years, or 3 years for a willful violation, and the back pay calculator will price what you are owed. Keeping your own shift record makes that conversation much shorter, which is what Timeclock44 is for: start and end times, breaks, and a per-job overtime multiplier, exported as a timesheet. Everything here is an estimate and general information only, not tax, payroll, or legal advice.