12-Hour Shift Overtime: What You Should Be Paid (2026)
A 12-hour shift is where the two overtime systems disagree. Under an 8-hour daily rule, four of those hours are premium the moment you work them. Under the federal weekly rule the same twelve hours are worth nothing extra until the week itself passes 40. Enter your shifts below and the week is priced against the rules that apply where you work.
Cal. Labor Code § 510
live · follows the calculator
- 8h/day → ×1.5 · 12h → ×2
- 7th day in a row → ×1.5
- 40h/week → ×1.5
this week · 36 h · under California’s rules
A differential is not a separate bonus. It folds into the regular rate the multiplier is applied to, so every overtime hour that week gets more valuable — paying 1.5× on base plus 1.0× on the differential is the classic short-pay.
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The full receipt — every line opens into its arithmetic
36h worked
$924.00
No weekly overtime owed: hours already paid a daily premium do not count again toward the 40. No hour is counted twice.
Assumes a Sunday workweek. Your employer sets this and it is printed on your stub — the app asks properly.
+$132.00 over the $792.00 a flat tracker shows for this week.
Cal. Labor Code § 510 · reviewed · How we calculate
This, automatically, every shift.
The app is the same engine running on every shift you work — offline, no account. It is on Google Play now; the iPhone version is next.
Overtally for iPhone — coming soonThe pattern
Three 12s is the standard full-time week wherever the job runs around the clock: 36 hours in three days, four days off, and a schedule that fits on one line. Rotations build from the same block — two on, two off, three on, then the same again with the days and the off-days swapped, so a crew covers every hour of every week without anyone working more than three shifts in a row.
36h
Three 12s. Mon, Wed, Fri — the nurse's week. Red is the premium band under California's daily rule.
60h
2-2-3, long half. Five shifts land inside one workweek.
24h
2-2-3, short half. The same rotation, two shifts, the following week.
Those last two are one rotation, not two schedules. Seven shifts over fourteen days averages 42 hours a week — but nobody is paid an average. The long half is a 60-hour week and the short half is a 24-hour week, and under a weekly rule every premium hour in the cycle sits in the long one; a daily rule such as California's also puts 8 premium hours in the short one.
Three 12s, worked through
Take $30.00 an hour and three 12-hour shifts in one workweek. In California, each shift splits at the eighth hour: 8 hours straight and 4 hours at one and a half. Three shifts make 24 straight hours at $30.00 = $720.00, plus 12 premium hours at $45.00 = $540.00. The week comes to $1,260.00. No weekly overtime enters it: the week worked 36 hours and the weekly threshold is 40.
The same three shifts in Texas, or any other state on the federal rule, pay 36 × $30.00 = $1,080.00. Nothing is owed above the regular rate, because the workweek never passed 40 hours. Same hours, same rate, same job — $180.00 apart.
Add a fourth shift and the gap narrows for a reason worth understanding. Four 12s is 48 hours: 32 straight and 16 at a daily premium in California. The weekly rule then finds only 32 straight-time hours to look at, so it adds nothing — hours already paid a daily premium are not counted a second time toward the weekly 40. A federal-rule state counts 40 straight and 8 over, so the premium hours are 16 against 8. By the fifth shift the two rules meet exactly at 20 premium hours, and from there they agree.
| 12s in the week | hours worked | CA premium hours | federal rule (TX) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 12h | 4h at 1.5× | none |
| 2 | 24h | 8h at 1.5× | none |
| 3 | 36h | 12h at 1.5× | none |
| 4 | 48h | 16h at 1.5× | 8h at 1.5× |
| 5 | 60h | 20h at 1.5× | 20h at 1.5× |
Assumes shifts of exactly 12 worked hours in one workweek, no seventh consecutive day and no unpaid time counted as worked. California pays double time past 12 hours in a day, so a shift that runs long adds a second band on top of these figures. They also assume no alternative workweek schedule: under one, California health care employees can work up to 12-hour days with no premium for hours up to 12.
Where a 12 crosses a daily line
Five US states and seven Canadian jurisdictions put a threshold inside the day. Below is every one of them and what a single 12-hour shift produces there, before the week is even counted. Everywhere else, a 12 is only worth more once the workweek passes its own threshold.
| jurisdiction | daily threshold | one 12-hour shift | statute |
|---|---|---|---|
| AlaskaUS | 8h | 4h at 1.5× | Alaska Stat. § 23.10.060 |
| CaliforniaUS | 8h · 2× past 12h | 4h at 1.5× | Cal. Labor Code § 510 |
| ColoradoUS | 12h | no daily premiumNothing from the 12-hour threshold itself, but hours past the twelfth consecutive hour count. | 7 CCR 1103-1 (COMPS Order), Rule 4.1 |
| NevadaUS | 8h | 4h at 1.5×Only for employees under the wage test — below 1.5× the state minimum wage. | Nev. Rev. Stat. § 608.018 |
| OregonUS | 10h | 2h at 1.5×Manufacturing and cannery work only. | ORS 652.020 (HB 3458) |
| AlbertaCA | 8h | 4h at 1.5× | Employment Standards Code, s. 21 |
| British ColumbiaCA | 8h · 2× past 12h | 4h at 1.5× | Employment Standards Act, s. 40 |
| ManitobaCA | 8h | 4h at 1.5× | Employment Standards Code, s. 17 |
| Northwest TerritoriesCA | 8h | 4h at 1.5× | Employment Standards Act (NWT) |
| NunavutCA | 8h | 4h at 1.5× | Labour Standards Act (Nunavut) |
| SaskatchewanCA | 8h | 4h at 1.5× | Saskatchewan Employment Act, ss. 2-17 and 2-18 |
| YukonCA | 8h | 4h at 1.5× | Employment Standards Act (Yukon) |
Which jobs run 12s
Nursing. Three 12s is the standard full-time contract on most inpatient units, and the shift usually runs past its scheduled end for handoff and charting. Those extra minutes are the ones that reach past 12 hours in a day, where California and British Columbia pay double.
Dispatch and public-safety communications. The console cannot be left uncovered, so relief is scheduled to the minute and holdovers are routine.
Plant operations. Refineries, chemical plants, power generation, paper mills — continuous process work that cannot be stopped overnight. This is where DuPont and 4-on-4-off rotations come from.
Fire and EMS. Some departments run 12-hour tours, though 24-hour and 48/96 tours are more common in fire. Public-agency fire protection and law enforcement can also be placed on a work period under 29 U.S.C. § 207(k) instead of a 40-hour workweek, which changes the threshold itself rather than the arithmetic — check which one your stub names.
Warehouse and distribution. Four 10s and three 12s both show up here, often in the same building, and peak season adds a fourth or fifth shift to the week — the point where the daily and weekly rules start producing different numbers.
Rotations that repeat
Every rotation below is built from 12-hour shifts and every one of them averages exactly 42 hours a week. That is the arithmetic of covering 168 hours with four crews. It is also the number that misleads people, because no workweek in any of these cycles is actually 42 hours long.
| rotation | cycle | shifts | hours per cycle | average week |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2-2-3 (Panama)Two on, two off, three on, then the mirror image. Crews trade days for nights on a slower turn. | 14 days | 7 | 84h | 42h |
| PitmanThe same 2-2-3 block worked by a fixed day or night crew. Every other weekend runs three days. | 14 days | 7 | 84h | 42h |
| 4-on-4-offFour straight, four off. The cycle is eight days and the workweek is seven, so the block walks across the calendar. | 8 days | 4 | 48h | 42h |
| DuPontFour nights, three off, three days, one off, three nights, three off, four days, seven off. | 28 days | 14 | 168h | 42h |
What each cycle does to a workweek is the part that decides pay. A 2-2-3 alternates 60 and 24 for only two of the seven possible workweek start days; the other five give 48 and 36. A 4-on-4-off gives a run of 48-hour weeks and then a run of 36s, because an eight-day cycle slides against a seven-day week. A rotation lines up with your employer’s workweek only when its cycle is a multiple of seven days — which is why the 14-day and 28-day patterns feel steady and the 8-day one never quite does.
The workweek is the thing to find out. It is a fixed, recurring 168-hour period your employer designates, it can start on any day at any hour, so ask your employer which one applies. Two crews on the same rotation with different workweek starts can be owed different amounts for identical hours.
the rotation, generated forward
Rebuilding a 2-2-3 by hand every fortnight is how shifts get missed. Overtally takes the pattern once — the block, the shift length, the day the cycle starts, your workweek — and writes every future shift onto the calendar, priced against your jurisdiction’s daily, weekly and seventh-day rules as it goes. Edit a swap or a holdover and the week reprices. It runs offline and asks for no account.
Overtally for iPhone — coming soonrelated pages
Questions people actually ask
Is a 12-hour shift automatically overtime?
Only where a daily threshold exists. In California, Alaska and Nevada, and in seven Canadian jurisdictions, the daily clock starts at 8 hours, so one 12 carries 4 premium hours on its own. In a state on the plain federal rule a 12 is simply 12 hours worked, and nothing is owed until the workweek passes 40.
Three 12s is 36 hours. Is any of it overtime?
In California, 12 hours of it. Each shift pays 8 hours straight and 4 hours at one and a half, so three shifts produce 12 premium hours even though the week never reaches 40. One exception is an alternative workweek schedule: health care employees can adopt one with 12-hour days and no premium before the twelfth hour. Under the federal weekly rule the same three shifts produce none, because 36 is under 40.
When does double time start on a 12-hour shift?
After the twelfth hour worked in one workday, and only in California and British Columbia — they are the only two places with a second daily tier. A shift that is exactly 12 hours does not reach it. A 12 that runs 40 minutes long puts those 40 minutes at twice the regular rate.
My 12s cross midnight. Which day do the hours count in?
A workday is a fixed 24-hour period your employer sets, and a workweek is a fixed, recurring 168 hours — neither is chosen shift by shift. In California the workday is whatever fixed 24 hours the employer set, and DLSE treats it as midnight to midnight when none was established, so a night 12 that crosses that boundary is split between two workdays and can fall under 8 in each. British Columbia counts a shift that runs past midnight as one day from its start. Colorado writes the rule down: the workday has to begin at the same hour as the workweek.
My rotation averages 42 hours a week. Does the average matter?
Not to the pay. Overtime is counted inside each fixed workweek, so a 2-2-3 that averages 42 hours is a 60-hour week followed by a 24-hour week when the workweek starts on the right day of the cycle, and every premium hour sits in the 60 under a weekly rule; a daily rule also puts 8 in the 24. Averaging across weeks is allowed only in specific places and under specific paperwork — Ontario, for instance, permits it over up to four weeks only under a written averaging agreement with the employee that sets a start date and an expiry date (s. 22(2)-(3)).
Seven days in a row on a rotation — is that worth a premium?
In California and Kentucky it is, when all seven days fall inside the same workweek. California pays the first 8 hours of the seventh day at one and a half and everything past 8 at double; Kentucky pays the seventh day at one and a half. The count resets at the workweek boundary, so seven days that straddle two workweeks can owe nothing extra — which is exactly what happens when a rotation and the workweek do not line up.
sources
- Cal. Labor Code § 510
- 29 U.S.C. § 207(a)(1)
- 7 CCR 1103-1 (COMPS Order), Rule 4.1
- KRS § 337.050
- Employment Standards Act, 2000, s. 22(1)
Every figure on this page traces to the statute or agency page above. If one is out of date, tell us — corrections ship the same week.
Overtally computes what you should be paid before taxes. It does not calculate take-home pay, withholding or deductions, and it is not legal advice — it is your own record and your own estimate.