United States

FLSA, in plain English.

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The Fair Labor Standards Act is the US federal law setting minimum wage, overtime pay, recordkeeping, and child labour standards. Its best-known rule requires overtime at one and a half times the regular rate for hours worked beyond 40 in a workweek for non-exempt employees. Exempt status depends on salary level and job duties, not job title. Workzoom tracks hours against the workweek so overtime is calculated from actual time, not estimates.

How FLSA works.

FLSA overtime is calculated on a fixed, recurring workweek of 168 hours, and that workweek does not have to match a pay period. An employer paying semi-monthly still owes overtime by workweek, which is why the two calendars have to be tracked separately. The regular rate is also not simply base hourly pay: non-discretionary bonuses and shift differentials get folded in, which raises the overtime rate above a naive time-and-a-half on base. State law can be stricter than federal, and where it is, the stricter rule applies.

Where FLSA goes wrong.

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In the product

How FLSA runs on Workzoom.

FLSA is part of the Workzoom Workforce Suite. Workzoom runs HR, workforce, and talent on a single employee record across ten countries: Canada, the United States, the Bahamas, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Antigua and Barbuda, Anguilla, the Cayman Islands, and the United Kingdom. Full gross-to-net payroll runs live in Canada, the United States, and the Bahamas. Pricing starts at $4 per employee per suite per month.

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Keep reading

Related terms.

Questions about FLSA

Federal FLSA overtime applies to non-exempt employees for hours worked beyond 40 in a single workweek, paid at one and a half times the regular rate. The workweek is a fixed, recurring 168-hour period and does not need to align with the pay period.
No. Exempt status requires meeting a salary basis and threshold plus a duties test tied to the actual work performed. Paying someone a salary, or giving them a manager title, does not by itself remove the overtime obligation.
No. Each workweek stands alone for FLSA overtime. An employee working 50 hours one week and 30 the next is owed 10 hours of overtime, even though the two-week total is 80 hours.
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