Nova Scotia Overtime Pay Calculator (2026)
Nova Scotia pays time and a half after 48 hours in a week, with no daily threshold. Enter the week you actually worked and it is priced against that rule, hour by hour, with the arithmetic shown for every line.
Labour Standards Code, Minimum Wage Order (General)
live · follows the calculator
- 48h/week → ×1.5
this week · 50 h · under Nova Scotia’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.
no signup · runs in your browser · nothing you type is sent anywhere
The full receipt — every line opens into its arithmetic
50h worked
$1,122.00
Assumes a Sunday workweek. Your employer sets this and it is printed on your stub — the app asks properly.
+$22.00 over the $1,100.00 a flat tracker shows for this week.
Labour Standards Code, Minimum Wage Order (General) · 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 soonbefore you use this figure
Most Nova Scotia employees are owed 1.5× their own rate after 48 hours, and that is what the calculator pays. The listed occupation classes — managers and supervisors, IT professionals, oil and gas and shipbuilding work, flat-rate mechanics, transport, and primary fish and farm processing among them — sit outside that rule and fall back to the Minimum Wage Order's floor of 1.5× the minimum wage. For transport work, that floor applies only after 96 hours in any two consecutive weeks. The floor is 1.5× $16.75 = $25.13 an hour from 1 April 2026, and 1.5× $17.00 = $25.50 an hour from 1 October 2026.
The rule Nova Scotia applies
Overtime in Nova Scotia turns over at 48h/week. Everything below comes from Labour Standards Code, Minimum Wage Order (General), linked in the card.
Nova Scotia · 2026
Labour Standards Code, Minimum Wage Order (General)| rule | applies when | paid at |
|---|---|---|
| Weekly overtime | Past 48 hours in a work week | 1.5× your regular rate |
| The two together | There is no daily rule to combine — only the week counts | — |
worth knowing
- Listed occupation classes — managers, IT professionals, oil and gas, flat-rate mechanics and others — are paid 1.5× the minimum wage after 48 hours rather than 1.5× their own rate.
Thresholds change at every border — every province and state sits side by side in one table. The rate itself is time and a half, half the rate again on top of each overtime hour.
Statutory holiday pay
A statutory holiday is not an unpaid day off. A qualifying employee is paid for it whether or not the business opens, and working the day is paid differently again — each jurisdiction sets whether that means holiday pay plus a premium for the hours worked, or regular pay plus a day off later.
One rule holds in every Canadian jurisdiction and is the easiest to get wrong: overtime pay is left out of the wage base the average is taken from. Averaging a gross figure that includes your premium hours overstates the holiday, which is why a big overtime week before a holiday does not raise it.
Nova Scotia sets the day's pay by its own formula: A regular day's pay at the regular rate. The Code sets no averaging window and no divisor. The window and the divisor change at every border — some jurisdictions average recent wages, some take a percentage, and some simply pay a normal day.
the part that surprises people
Nova Scotia never averages your wages for the day at all — it pays a normal day at the regular rate — so the question of what sits inside an averaged base does not arise here.
The days whose answer changes at the border — Nova Scotia keeps one of them, under the name the statute uses here. It opens who else in Canada owes the day: Nova Scotia Heritage Day (the third Monday in February)
The Nova Scotia formula, the qualifying test and this year's holiday dates → →Every jurisdiction's holiday-pay rule in one table →
Banking overtime instead of taking the money
Most Canadian jurisdictions allow overtime to be taken as paid time off instead of pay — a time bank, or time off in lieu. It is not something an employer can simply decide: almost everywhere it takes a written agreement made before the hours are worked, and without one the overtime is money.
The usual exchange is an hour and a half of paid time off for each overtime hour — the same 1.5 the money would have carried, converted into time. Alberta is the one jurisdiction that banks hour for hour instead, which makes the choice between pay and time off a different decision there than it is here.
Banked time also expires. Each jurisdiction sets a window — months rather than years — within which the time has to be taken, and what is still in the bank when it closes has to be paid out in money. If you are banking hours, the date they run out matters as much as the count, and both belong on your own record rather than only in the employer’s system.
A week, priced
50h at $26.00 an hour, run through Nova Scotia’s rules by the same engine as the calculator above.
No day is marked in premium colour, and that is the point: in Nova Scotia the premium belongs to the week, not the day. Five ten-hour days are five ordinary days until the week itself passes 48 hours — after which every further hour is overtime, whichever day it happened to fall on.
| line | hours | rate | amount |
|---|---|---|---|
| Regular | 50h | $26.00 | $1,300.00 |
| Weekly overtime1.5× | 2h | +$13.00 | $26.00 |
| What the week is worth | 50h | $1,326.00 |
Every hour is paid once at $26.00; the premium lines add what overtime puts on top of that. Half the rate again for time and a half, the rate again for double time — the total is the same as multiplying each hour out at 1.5× or 2×, and it is the way payroll writes it on a stub.
Where these rules stop
Every jurisdiction writes an exemption list, and the categories repeat across the country: work that is genuinely managerial or supervisory, several licensed professions, some agricultural and fishing work, and roles paid entirely on commission away from the workplace. Some provinces add information-technology professionals, particular transport roles or specific industries on their own schedules. A job title does not settle the question — the work actually performed does, and the exemption list published by Nova Scotia is where to check it.
Some jobs are not covered by provincial rules at all. Banks, airlines, railways, interprovincial trucking and shipping, telecommunications, broadcasting, ports and Crown corporations are federally regulated: their overtime comes from the Canada Labour Code — time and a half past 8 hours in a day or 40 in a week — no matter which province the work happens in.
A collective agreement can improve on the statutory minimum, and in some jurisdictions it can rearrange parts of it. If you have one, it is the first document to read, and the figures on this page are the floor it has to clear.
Nova Scotia overtime — the questions people ask
Is overtime daily or weekly in Nova Scotia?
Weekly. Nova Scotia counts hours past 48 in a work week and nothing else — the length of any single day does not matter on its own. A 12-hour shift inside a week that never reaches 48 hours owes no premium at all.
What is the overtime rate in Nova Scotia?
Time and a half of your regular rate. Every hour is paid once at that rate, and each overtime hour adds half of it again on top; the two together make the 1.5. Payroll normally prints them as separate lines, which is why the worked example above does too.
Does Nova Scotia pay double time?
Not under Nova Scotia law. The statute sets a single overtime rate, time and a half. Double time here comes from a collective agreement or an employer policy — British Columbia is the only province or territory whose employment standards act sets a second tier.
Do salaried employees get overtime in Nova Scotia?
Salary is a way of being paid, not an exemption. What decides it is whether the work falls into a class the statute excludes — genuinely managerial work, certain licensed professions, some farm and transport roles. A salaried employee outside those classes is owed overtime like anyone else, with the salary converted to an hourly rate to calculate it.
Can my employer average my hours over more than one week?
Only under a formal arrangement. Most Canadian jurisdictions allow hours to be averaged across two or more weeks, but it takes a written agreement and, in several of them, an approval or a permit on top. Without one, each work week stands on its own and is counted on its own.
Does a statutory holiday change the overtime threshold that week?
Not in Nova Scotia — the threshold stays at 48. Hours you did not work are not hours worked, so a paid holiday you took off does not push the week over the line by itself. Other jurisdictions do move the line: Saskatchewan, Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut drop to 32 hours in a holiday week, and Manitoba and Quebec count the holiday’s hours as hours worked.
Every province and territory
- Alberta8h/day · 44h/week
- British Columbia8h/day · 40h/week
- Manitoba8h/day · 40h/week
- New Brunswick44h/week
- Newfoundland and Labrador40h/week
- Northwest Territories8h/day · 40h/week
- Nunavut8h/day · 40h/week
- Ontario44h/week
- Prince Edward Island44h/week
- Quebec40h/week
- Saskatchewan8h/day · 40h/week
- Yukon8h/day · 40h/week
sources
- Labour Standards Code, Minimum Wage Order (General)
- Minimum Wage Order (General), N.S. Reg. 5/1999, ss. 6, 10
- Labour Standards Code, ss. 37–43 — statutory holiday pay
- Canada Labour Code, Part III — hours of work and overtime
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.