12 Hour Shift Pay Calculator

What this calculator does

A 12-hour shift is rarely paid at one flat rate the whole way through. Often the first stretch is at your normal wage, and the later hours tip over into overtime at a higher rate. That makes working out what a single shift actually earns a little fiddlier than it looks. This calculator sorts it out. You tell it your regular wage, your overtime wage, and how many of the twelve hours count as regular, and it works out your blended pay for the shift and what that adds up to over a day, week, month, and year.

How the shift splits into regular and overtime

The idea is straightforward. Out of the twelve hours, some number are paid at your regular rate, and whatever is left runs at your overtime rate. If eight hours are regular, the remaining four are overtime.

The calculator blends those two rates into a single average wage for the shift, weighted by how many hours fall into each. That average is the honest hourly figure for a shift that is part regular and part overtime, and it is the foundation for every other number the tool gives you. The more of your twelve hours land in overtime, the higher that blended average climbs.

A worked example

Say your regular wage is 20 an hour, your overtime wage is 30 an hour, and 8 of the 12 hours are regular, leaving 4 at overtime.

Blending eight hours at 20 with four hours at 30 gives an average wage of $23.33 an hour across the shift. That works out to $280 for the 12-hour day. From there the tool projects the rest: about $1,400 a week, $6,160 a month, and $72,800 a year. The single shift is the real, exact figure, and the longer numbers show you where that shift leads if you keep the same pattern going.

Reading the day, week, month, and year figures

It is worth knowing how the longer projections are built, so you read them for what they are. The day figure is simply your blended wage across the full twelve hours. The week, month, and year figures then assume you work one of these 12-hour shifts on every working day: five shifts a week, twenty-two a month, and two hundred and sixty across the year.

That is a heavy schedule, and many people who work 12-hour shifts actually do fewer of them, three or four a week is common. So if your rota is lighter than every working day, treat the weekly, monthly, and yearly numbers as the ceiling for that pattern rather than your exact pay, and scale them to the number of shifts you really work. The per-shift figure, though, is spot on.

A word on overtime rules

Overtime is not paid the same way everywhere, so it helps to know where your extra rate actually kicks in. Under U.S. federal law, the Fair Labor Standards Act requires overtime at one and a half times the regular rate once you pass 40 hours in a workweek, and that threshold is weekly, not daily. So on the federal rule alone, hours are not automatically overtime just for falling later in a long shift.

That said, some states set their own daily overtime rules, where hours beyond a certain point in a single day must be paid at the overtime rate, and many workplaces have shift policies of their own. This tool's regular-then-overtime split fits those daily arrangements, so enter the hours and the overtime wage that match your actual situation. If you are working out the effect of a raise on all this, our pay raise calculator helps, and the salary to hourly calculator converts between salary and hourly pay.

How to use it

• Hourly wage. Your regular rate of pay.
• Overtime hourly wage. Your overtime rate, entered as an actual hourly figure, for example 30 if that is your time-and-a-half rate.
• Number of regular hours. How many of the 12 hours are paid at the regular rate, up to 12. The rest are treated as overtime.

Press Calculate for your average wage, per-shift pay, and the day, week, month, and year projections. Press Reset to clear it.

Questions people ask

How is pay for a 12-hour shift calculated?

By paying the regular hours at your normal rate and the remaining hours at your overtime rate, then blending them into an average hourly wage for the shift. Multiply that average by 12 and you have the pay for one shift.

How does the overtime part work?

You choose how many of the 12 hours are regular, and the rest are paid at the overtime rate you enter. Note that federal overtime law is based on working more than 40 hours in a week, while daily overtime depends on your state or employer, so set the split to match your actual pay rules.

Are the weekly and yearly figures guaranteed?

No. They assume you work a 12-hour shift every working day, which is a full schedule. If you work fewer shifts, scale the figures down to the number you actually work. The per-shift figure is the reliable one.

References

The overtime standard of one and a half times the regular rate after 40 hours in a workweek, and the note that some states set additional daily overtime rules, follow the U.S. Department of Labor.

1. U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division. Overtime Pay. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/overtime
2. U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division. Wages and the Fair Labor Standards Act. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/flsa