Hourly Employee Pay Stub Generator

Each workweek stands alone — why a biweekly stub can be wrong

The FLSA takes a single workweek as its standard and does not permit averaging hours over two or more weeks. 29 CFR § 778.104 gives the exact case: work 30 hours one week and 50 the next, and you must receive overtime for the hours beyond forty in the second week — even though the two-week average is exactly forty. The regulation says this holds regardless of whether you are paid daily, weekly, biweekly or monthly.

So if you are paid biweekly and your stub shows a flat "80 regular hours" for a period where one week ran long and the other ran short, that stub is wrong and you are owed overtime. This is the most common error worth checking on your own pay, and it is invisible unless you know to look for it.

Note the exact words of 29 U.S.C. § 207(a)(1) too: overtime is one and one-half times the regular rate, not one and one-half times your hourly rate. Those are frequently different numbers, which is the next section.

Your regular rate is often higher than your hourly rate

29 CFR § 778.109 defines the regular rate as total remuneration for the workweek, minus statutory exclusions, divided by the total hours actually worked. That means several things that appear on stubs as separate lines actually belong inside the overtime base.

The regulations' own worked example: at $12 an hour with a $46 production bonus in a 46-hour week, 46 × $12 is $552, plus the $46 bonus is $598, divided by 46 hours gives a regular rate of $13 — not $12. Overtime is then computed on $13, so the week owes $637, not the $598 a payroll system would produce if it treated the bonus as sitting outside the calculation.

Nondiscretionary bonuses go in

The test in § 778.211(b) is whether the employer kept discretion over both the fact and the amount until close to the end of the period. If you were told about it in advance, or it was promised at hiring or set by a collective agreement, discretion was abandoned and it belongs in the overtime base.

So do shift differentials and hazard pay

§ 778.207(b) requires night-shift differentials — whether a percentage or so many cents an hour — and premiums for hazardous, arduous or dirty work to be included, along with incentive pay for rapid performance and lump sums paid without regard to hours.

Two rates in one week means a weighted average

§ 778.115: if you work two roles at different rates for the same employer, the regular rate for that week is total earnings divided by total hours across both. Overtime is computed on that blended figure, not on whichever rate you happened to be working when hour 41 arrived.

A quarterly bonus triggers retroactive overtime

§ 778.209 requires a bonus that could not be calculated week by week to be apportioned back over the weeks it was earned, with additional overtime owed for every overtime week in that period. And § 778.106 puts a deadline on it: payment may not be delayed longer than reasonably necessary, and in no event beyond the next payday after the computation can be made.

Two patterns the regulations name outright

The Labor Department wrote rules against two specific stub arrangements, which makes them easy to check for.

The first is an artificially low hourly rate. § 778.500(a) states that overtime cannot be avoided by setting an artificially low hourly rate and making up the difference by other means — the established hourly rate is your regular rate only if hourly earnings are your sole source of compensation. § 778.500(b) adds that the rate for overtime hours cannot be lower than for non-overtime hours, and cannot vary from week to week inversely with the length of the workweek.

The second is calling part of your ordinary wage a bonus. § 778.502 says the term is improperly applied when used to designate a portion of regular wages you were already entitled to. Its example is an employer who owes $300 a week, breaks it into 40 hours at $4.80, overtime at $7.20, and labels the remainder a bonus that shrinks as hours rise and vanishes entirely at 55 hours. That is the test you can apply to your own stub: if the bonus gets smaller in the weeks you work more, that is the pattern the regulation describes.

Four states run a second clock

The federal rule is weekly. Some states add a daily trigger, and each works differently.

California

Time and a half beyond eight hours in a workday up to twelve, double time beyond twelve, time and a half for the first eight hours on the seventh consecutive day of a workweek, and double time beyond eight on that seventh day.

Alaska

Time and a half beyond eight hours in a day as well as beyond forty in a week.

Nevada

Daily overtime beyond eight hours, but only for employees paid less than one and a half times the state minimum wage — above that, it is weekly only. That wage condition is almost always reported wrong.

Colorado

Under COMPS Order #40, effective 1 February 2026, overtime is owed on whichever of three calculations pays most: over forty hours in a workweek, over twelve hours in a workday, or over twelve consecutive hours regardless of when the workday starts.

Minnesota, with a caveat

The state threshold is forty-eight hours, not forty. But that is the state floor — an employee covered by the FLSA still gets federal overtime after forty. The state rule only bites for workers the FLSA does not reach.

The exempt salary threshold: settled, and probably not what you read

If you have been told the salary threshold for exempt status is $844 or $1,128 a week, that is out of date. Those figures came from a 2024 rule that never survived.

The current threshold is $684 a week, equivalent to $35,568 a year, with the highly compensated employee level at $107,432 including at least $684 a week on a salary basis. The 2024 increase was vacated by the Eastern District of Texas in November 2024 and by the Northern District of Texas in December 2024. The Fifth Circuit dismissed both appeals on 5 and 7 May 2026, and the Labor Department formally restored the earlier regulatory text effective 15 May 2026. This is settled, not pending — do not expect it to rise on the old schedule.

Two things people miss. Salary alone never decides exempt status: the duties test has to be met as well, so being paid a salary does not by itself remove your right to overtime. And the salary tests do not apply at all to doctors, lawyers, teachers and outside sales employees.

States set their own, higher floors, and the two largest are formulas rather than fixed numbers, so they move every January. California requires a monthly salary of at least twice the state minimum wage for full-time employment, defined as forty hours a week. Washington uses a multiplier of the state minimum wage that also depends on employer size — 2.25 times for all employers in 2026, rising on a published schedule after that.

Tipped work: the tip credit and the condition attached to it

The federal tip credit lets an employer count tips toward the minimum wage, paying a cash wage as low as $2.13 an hour, with the credit equal to the minimum wage minus that cash wage.

But it is conditional, and this is the most actionable fact on this page for tipped workers. Under 29 CFR § 531.59(b) an employer is not eligible to take the tip credit unless it has informed you in advance — of the cash wage, the amount of the credit, that you keep all your tips except through a valid tip pool, and that the credit does not apply to anyone who was not told. No advance notice means no tip credit, and the employer owes the full minimum wage in cash. If your tips fall short in a given period, the employer has to make up the balance regardless.

You only count as a tipped employee if you personally receive more than $30 a month in tips — § 531.56(c) is explicit that being part of a group with that record does not qualify you. And under the dual jobs rule, restored in December 2024 after the Fifth Circuit vacated the 2021 version, no tip credit may be taken for hours worked in a genuinely separate non-tipped occupation.

Employers, managers and supervisors may not keep employees' tips under any circumstances, including through a tip pool, and tips collected for a mandatory pool generally must be redistributed within the pay period. The remedy has teeth: 29 U.S.C. § 216(b) makes an employer liable for any tip credit taken plus all tips unlawfully kept, and an equal additional amount as liquidated damages.