Sign in Subscribe
Advice & Opinion

Clocks fall back Nov. 1. Your 8-hour night shift becomes 9, and the law says pay it.

A 10 p.m.-6 a.m. shift this Sunday lasts nine hours. Hourly workers must be paid for all of them, sometimes at overtime rates.

Clocks fall back Nov. 1. Your 8-hour night shift becomes 9, and the law says pay it.
Stock photo. Photo by Ondrej Polak on Unsplash

At 2 a.m. this Sunday, Nov. 1, clocks across most of the country slide back to 1 a.m. and the hour plays again, like a rerun nobody requested. If you work overnight, you work through the encore, and federal law says you get paid for it.

The math is simple. A 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. shift that night lasts nine hours, not eight. The U.S. Department of Labor's own hours-worked advisor walks through that exact shift and says the Fair Labor Standards Act requires that employees "must be credited with all of the hours actually worked." The American Society of Employers, a Michigan HR association, reminded its members of the same thing in its Oct. 28 Quick Hits, noting the extra hour can push a nonexempt worker into overtime. When the employers' own trade group is telling employers to pay up, you can safely assume the hour is yours.

Who gets paid for the bonus hour

If you're paid by the hour, you are almost certainly "nonexempt," which means the federal overtime rules cover you. Under 29 U.S.C. § 207, every hour past 40 in a workweek must be paid at no less than one and one-half times your regular rate. So if Sunday's ninth hour is your 41st of the week, it is an overtime hour. Work your employer "suffered or permitted" is paid time (29 C.F.R. § 785.11), whatever the wall clock says.

Exempt salaried workers get the same paycheck either way. But salary alone doesn't make you exempt: you generally have to earn at least $684 a week, the level the Labor Department restored in May, and do executive, administrative or professional work that passes DOL's duties tests. As DOL's Fact Sheet 17A puts it, "Job titles do not determine exempt status." A "night supervisor" who spends the shift stocking shelves may be owed overtime.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in September that 15% of wage and salary workers usually work a non-daytime schedule, including 3% who work nights. Add the seasonal crowd: if you just signed on for an overnight holiday shift, read our guide to your rights in a seasonal job.

States that count by the day

A few states also pay overtime by the day, so the extra hour can matter even in a short week.

  • California: Labor Code § 510 requires time and a half for "any work in excess of eight hours in one workday" and double time past 12. That makes the ninth hour of a 10-to-6 shift an overtime hour, and it turns the 13th hour of a 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. hospital shift into double time. Alternative workweek schedules change some of these thresholds, so check yours.
  • Alaska: AS 23.10.060 requires overtime after eight hours a day, for employers with four or more employees.
  • Nevada: NRS 608.018 requires overtime after eight hours in a workday for workers paid less than one and a half times the state minimum wage, unless you agreed to a schedule of four 10-hour days.
  • Colorado: The state's COMPS Order requires overtime past 12 hours in a workday or 12 consecutive hours. Your 12-hour overnight just became 13.

Where the hour goes missing

Plenty of payroll systems pay the schedule instead of the punches: the schedule says eight, so the check says eight. Legally, that's their problem. Federal rules require your employer to record the actual "hours worked each workday" (29 C.F.R. § 516.2).

How to collect

Keep your own record. Write down when you started and stopped Saturday night, and note that the clocks fell back.

Check the pay stub that covers Nov. 1. Look for nine hours that day, and overtime pay if the week topped 40 or your state counts by the day.

Ask payroll in writing if it's short. An email works: "My Nov. 1 overnight shift ran nine hours because of the time change, and my check paid eight. Please correct it."

File a wage claim if they don't. Federal complaints go to the DOL's Wage and Hour Division at 1-866-487-9243, and DOL says complaints are confidential. In California, the Labor Commissioner gives you three years to file overtime claims and says its laws protect workers "regardless of immigration status." Federal claims generally must be brought within two years, or three for willful violations (29 U.S.C. § 255).

Your employer can't punish you for asking. The FLSA makes it illegal "to discharge or in any other manner discriminate against any employee because such employee has filed any complaint" (29 U.S.C. § 215(a)(3)).

The March payback

The clock giveth, and in spring it taketh away. When daylight saving time returns at 2 a.m. on the second Sunday of March, per NIST (March 14, 2027), that same overnight shift runs seven hours, and DOL's advisor says you "only worked seven hours." Federal law lets an hourly employer pay seven. A union contract or written pay policy may guarantee more, so read yours now, while the hour is still running in your favor.

Sources

Read next

Comments ()