West Virginia Overtime Laws & Calculator

Weekly. West Virginia sets no daily threshold, so a twelve-hour day owes no premium on its own — those hours go into the week's total like any others, and the count that decides your pay is hours past 40 in a single workweek.

No. Four ten-hour days is 40 hours, and the weekly rule starts past 40 hours, not at them. Day length does not matter in West Virginia: four tens, five eights and three long shifts all pay the same if the week's total is the same.

No West Virginia statute sets a double-time rate. Where double time appears on a stub here it comes from a union agreement, a company policy or a holiday practice — worth having in writing, but it is an agreement rather than the law. What the statute requires is time and a half past 40 hours in a workweek, with no daily threshold.

West Virginia has no seventh-day rule. Those hours count toward the workweek like any others, so a seven-day stretch usually produces overtime through the weekly total instead: seven eight-hour days is 56 hours, of which 16 are past 40.

Yes. W. Va. Code § 21-5C-3(a) says an employer may not employ an employee for a workweek longer than forty hours unless the employee is paid at least one and one-half times the regular rate for the hours over forty. The federal Fair Labor Standards Act has the same weekly rule in 29 U.S.C. § 207(a)(1): a forty-hour workweek line and time and a half the regular rate. The state workweek is a regularly recurring period of 168 hours, seven consecutive 24-hour periods, and it need not match the calendar week (§ 21-5C-1(g)). The state law is a separate statute, but it covers only some employers and employees, as the next question explains.

Only in some cases. W. Va. Code § 21-5C-1(e) counts an employer as one that employs six or more employees (as the article defines employee) during a calendar week at any one separate, distinct and permanent location or business establishment. For overtime under § 21-5C-3, the same definition leaves out an employer if 80 percent of the persons it employs are subject to a federal act on maximum hours and overtime. The West Virginia Division of Labor reads this to mean state overtime law applies only if all three are true: the company does not have federal Fair Labor Standards Act enterprise coverage, fewer than 80 percent of its employees are covered individually under federal overtime law, and it has at least six non-exempt employees at one separate, distinct and permanent location. The Division says that where federal jurisdiction is established, the requirements of state law cannot be applied, and it sends questions about federal coverage to the U.S. Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division. Section 21-5C-1(f) also lists people the state law's definition of employee does not include, such as part-time students, people 62 or older who receive Social Security old-age or survivors benefits, and firefighters employed by the state or a state agency. Those exclusions are part of the state law; whether federal law covers a worker is a separate question.

It depends on which law covers your employer. The West Virginia Division of Labor's Wage & Hour Section page lists minimum wage and overtime requirements among the laws it enforces, but it also says the payment of overtime wages is among the laws preempted by federal statute and enforced by federal agencies. The Division's fact sheets say that once a company meets the three conditions for state overtime law (see the previous question), the jurisdictional requirements of state law relating to the enforcement of overtime wages are also met. For federal coverage, the U.S. Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division takes complaints at 1-866-487-9243. The Division of Labor also publishes a general Request for Assistance form that asks for the employer, where and what work you did, a description of the complaint and the wages or fringe benefits you say are owed. Its Wage & Hour office lists (304) 558-7890 and wageandhour@wv.gov.

Usually, yes. The multiplier is applied to the regular rate, not to your base wage, and the regular rate takes in nondiscretionary bonuses, production and attendance bonuses, and shift differentials for the week they were earned. An overtime hour in a week with a night differential is worth more than base × 1.5. Bonuses that are genuinely discretionary — not promised in advance — stay out of it. The federal rules for building the regular rate are at 29 C.F.R. Part 778 and apply in West Virginia.

Not by itself. A salary is a way of paying, not an exemption. The white-collar exemptions turn on the work actually performed together with how and how much you are paid, and the duties tests at 29 C.F.R. Part 541 do not include job titles. A salaried employee whose duties fall outside those tests is owed overtime on the same 40-hour week as anyone else.