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Around one in sixteen Canadian employees works under the Canada Labour Code rather than a provincial act, and most of them do not know it. The Code sets standard hours of eight in a day and forty in a week, pays time and a half past either, and caps the week at forty-eight. Whether it applies to you turns on what your employer does, not on where you live.
Last reviewed · maintained by Ihor Bezrukavnyk · how we calculate
Federal jurisdiction follows the industry, not the address. A teller in a Toronto bank is federal; the shop next door on the same street is provincial. These are the sectors:
Banking
Chartered banks and authorised foreign banks
Air transport
Airlines, airports, aerodromes and air navigation
Rail and road
Interprovincial railways, trucking, buses and ferries
Marine
Shipping, navigation and port operations
Telecom and broadcasting
Telephone, cable, radio and television
Postal and courier
Canada Post and interprovincial courier work
Grain and uranium
Grain elevators, feed mills, uranium mining
First Nations
Band councils and many band-run operations
Federal Crown
Federal Crown corporations and certain agencies
The test is the nature of the employer's undertaking. If the business exists to move people, goods, money or signals across a provincial or national boundary, it is usually federal.
Everything else — retail, restaurants, manufacturing, construction, health care, most offices — runs on the employment standards act of the province it sits in.
| rule | when it bites | what it pays |
|---|---|---|
| Standard hours — the day | Past 8 hours in a day | ×1.5 |
| Standard hours — the week | Past 40 hours in a week | ×1.5 |
| Maximum hours | Past 48 hours in a week | A ceiling, not a rate |
| Working a general holiday | Hours worked on the day itself | ×1.5, on top of holiday pay |
There is no double-time tier anywhere in the Code. One and a half times the regular rate is the only multiplier it uses — in section 174 for overtime and in section 197 for holiday work.
When a week breaks both thresholds, the two are not added together. The Code defines overtime as hours “in excess of standard hours of work”, and an hour is either inside standard hours or outside them — it cannot be outside them twice.
overtime = daily excess + any hours still over 40 after those are set aside
Which is the same as taking the greater of the two counts. Pay the daily premium first, then apply the weekly threshold to what is left.
| the week | hours | adding both | the Code |
|---|---|---|---|
| 12h Monday, then 8h × 4 | 44 | 8 h | 4 h |
| 9h × 5 days | 45 | 10 h | 5 h |
| 10h × 4, then 8h × 2 | 56 | 24 h | 16 h |
| 8h × 6 days | 48 | 8 h | 8 h |
Worth being straight about this: the Code does not spell the interaction out in so many words. It follows from the definition of overtime in section 166 rather than from an express rule, and it is how the two thresholds are ordinarily administered. Where a lot of money turns on it, put the question to the Labour Program before relying on the figure.
The federal preset is loaded below: eight in a day, forty in a week, no hour counted twice. Every line opens into the arithmetic behind it.
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
Biweekly period · 81h across 2 workweeks
receipt shows week 1 · $143.00 earned above straight time
what this week should pay · gross
45h
$1,133.00
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.
+$143.00 over the $1,782.00 a flat tracker shows for this period.
This, automatically, every shift.
US and Canada · works offline · no account.
iPhone & Android — coming soonOpen in the app with this setup →The two numbers do independent work. Forty is where time and a half starts. Forty-eight is where the hours themselves become unlawful without an agreement. Hours forty-one to forty-eight are perfectly legal and still owe overtime.
Above forty-eight, the employer needs one of four things: a modified schedule that averages out at forty-eight, a permit from the Head of Compliance and Enforcement, genuine emergency work, or a regulation covering the class of employee. None of them touches the pay — legalising an hour does not make it cheaper.
The Code gives ten paid general holidays, with no qualifying period — the entitlement attaches to any general holiday falling inside your employment.
holiday pay
wages in the 4 weeks before the week of the holiday, excluding overtime pay, ÷ 20
Paid wholly or partly on commission, with at least 12 weeks behind you? The divisor is 60 and the window is the preceding 12 weeks instead.
Work the holiday and you are owed holiday pay for the day plus time and a half for the hours you actually worked. The statute says “in addition to” — the premium does not swallow the holiday pay.
A week containing a paid general holiday has its weekly standard reduced by the standard hours of that holiday — forty becomes thirty-two — and the hours worked on the holiday itself are left out of the weekly count rather than counted twice.
Division I — standard hours, maximum hours and overtime pay — does not reach everyone:
A caution that cuts the other way: the 2021 regulations covering road transport, postal work, marine, grain, banking, telecom, rail and air are widely misread as overtime exemptions. They are not. They exempt those sectors from the break, rest-period and schedule-notice rules only — standard hours, maximum hours and overtime pay are untouched.
Most Canadian workers are provincially regulated. The thresholds differ sharply — Ontario has no daily threshold at all, Alberta and British Columbia do.
Every province and territoryAll thresholds in one tableThe main overtime calculator
Look at what your employer does, not where you work. Banks, airlines, railways, interprovincial trucking and bus lines, shipping, telephone and cable companies, radio and television, Canada Post, grain elevators, uranium mining, First Nations band councils and federal Crown corporations are federal. If your employer's business crosses a provincial or national boundary as its ordinary work, it is probably federal. Everything else is provincial.
No. Time and a half is the only multiplier in the Code. It appears in section 174 for overtime hours and in section 197 for hours worked on a general holiday, and nowhere does the Code set a second, higher tier. If your employer pays double time, that comes from your contract or collective agreement, not from the Code.
Four hours. The Monday day gives four hours past the eight-hour standard, and the week totals 44. Because those four hours are already outside standard hours, they do not count again toward the forty — so the week owes four overtime hours, not eight. Adding the two counts together would overstate what you are owed by double.
No, and the two numbers are easy to confuse. Overtime starts at 40 hours in a week or 8 in a day. Forty-eight is the maximum hours you may lawfully be required to work in a week without an agreement or permit. Hours 41 through 48 are lawful and still paid at time and a half.
Only if you ask for it and both of you sign a written agreement. The Code puts the request in the employee's hands. The rate is an hour and a half of paid time off for every overtime hour, it has to be taken within three months of the end of the pay period unless a longer period is agreed, and anything left untaken must be paid out in cash at time and a half within thirty days.
Probably not. The exclusion is for employees who are managers or superintendents or who genuinely exercise management functions — it turns on what the job actually involves, not on the title printed on the contract. An employee given a manager's title but no management function is not excluded from overtime.
Take the wages you earned in the four weeks before the week the holiday falls in, leave overtime pay out of that total, and divide by twenty. If you are paid wholly or partly on commission and have at least twelve weeks of continuous employment, the window is the preceding twelve weeks and the divisor is sixty instead.
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.