Georgia Has No State Overtime Law
Georgia is one of the states with no overtime statute of its own. The Georgia Minimum Wage Act (O.C.G.A. § 34-4-3) sets a $5.15 hourly floor but says nothing about time and a half, daily overtime, or premium pay. For virtually every worker in the state, overtime rights come from the federal Fair Labor Standards Act: 1.5x the regular rate for every hour past 40 in a single workweek.
The $5.15 state wage only matters for employers outside FLSA coverage — businesses under $500,000 in annual volume that do no interstate commerce, a shrinking group. Even for them, Georgia's statute adds no overtime rights beyond federal law. If your employer is FLSA-covered, the federal $7.25 floor and the federal overtime rules control, full stop.
One weekly number drives everything: total hours worked in the designated workweek. Employers pick a fixed 168-hour window and cannot move it around to dodge the 40-hour trigger. The time card calculator helps you turn daily punches into that weekly total before you run the overtime math.
The Regular Rate Includes More Than Base Pay
FLSA overtime runs on the regular rate — your actual hourly earnings for the week, not the base figure on the pay stub. Under 29 U.S.C. § 207(e), nondiscretionary bonuses, shift differentials, and commissions must be folded in before the 1.5x rate is computed. A commission calculator totals the commission side; this tool adds it back into the overtime rate where the law requires it.
Worked example from the defaults: $16.00/hr, 46 hours, $92 weekly production bonus. Straight pay is $828.00, so the blended regular rate is 828 ÷ 46 = $18.00/hr — two full dollars above base. The overtime rate becomes $27.00/hr, not $24.00, and six OT hours pay $162.00 inside the $882.00 weekly total.
An employer who pays OT at 1.5 x $16 hands over $876.00 — $6.00 light for that week. At $300 of weekly commissions the gap widens to $19.57 per week, more than $1,000 across a year. Auditing a check with the annual pay calculator is a start, but the overtime line needs its own check against the blended rate.
Hourly Overtime: The Weekly 40-Hour Test
For hourly workers the math is a two-step. First total straight-time earnings (rate x hours + bonuses), then divide by hours worked to get the regular rate, and finally add a half-time premium for each hour over 40. The default scenario lands at $882.00: 40 hours x $18.00 blended straight time plus 6 OT hours x $27.00.
Georgia charges no daily overtime. A 12-hour Tuesday followed by a short Friday is all straight time if the week stays at or under 40 hours. Only the weekly total triggers the premium — a point that catches workers moving from California, where hours past 8 in a day pay extra.
Breaks matter at the margin: rest breaks of 5 to 20 minutes count as paid hours worked, while a genuine 30-minute-plus meal break where you are fully relieved does not. Answering work texts through lunch keeps it on the clock. Those minutes push a week toward 40 faster than most schedules suggest.
Salaried Nonexempt and the Half-Time Method
A salary label does not end overtime. For a nonexempt salaried worker — say $800/week covering a 40-hour schedule — the FLSA method in 29 C.F.R. § 778.113 treats the salary as straight time for the scheduled week: regular rate = 800 ÷ 40 = $20.00/hr, overtime premium = 0.5 x $20.00 x 6 = $60.00, weekly total $860.00 at 46 hours.
The fluctuating workweek method pays less — $852.17 here, because the same salary spread over 46 hours gives a $17.39 blended rate — but it demands a clear prior agreement and a salary that never shrinks in light weeks. To convert the other direction, the annual salary calculator breaks an annual figure into weekly pay.
Misclassification gets expensive fast. A 'supervisor' paid $600/week who does 50 hours of stocking has math of 600 ÷ 40 = $15.00/hr and a $75.00 weekly half-time premium — $3,900 a year — with courts commonly doubling that as liquidated damages once the duties test fails.
Tipped Employees: Overtime at $5.76 Cash
Federal tip credit math in one paragraph: the employer pays $2.13 cash and may count up to $5.12/hr of tips toward the $7.25 regular rate. The regular rate still has to reach $7.25, so the OT rate is $10.875 — and the credit applies to overtime hours too. Required OT cash = 10.875 − 5.12 = $5.755/hr, the figure the U.S. DOL rounds to $5.76.
The default tipped scenario: 46 hours at $2.13 base with $260 in tips, enough for the full credit. Cash owed = 40 x $2.13 + 6 x $5.755 = $119.73, and tips bring take-home to $379.73. Short tips change the math — $150 over 46 hours means a credit of only $3.26/hr, so straight cash must be topped up to $3.99/hr and total cash owed rises to $205.25.
The classic violation is OT cash at 1.5 x $2.13 = $3.20/hr. That underpays $2.56 per overtime hour — $15.36 a week at six OT hours, $1,597.44 over two years, doubled to $3,194.88 as liquidated damages. Florida runs the same federal credit against a higher state floor; the Florida overtime calculator covers that version.
Who Is Actually Exempt in Georgia
Exemption requires salary AND duties. The white-collar tests demand at least $684/week ($35,568/year) plus genuine executive, administrative, or professional duties — directing staff, real discretion on significant matters, or a learned profession. The highly compensated route needs $107,432/year plus at least one exempt duty. A 2024 attempt to raise these thresholds was vacated by a federal court, so verify current figures with the U.S. DOL.
Blue-collar and manual workers — construction crews, mechanics, line cooks, parcel loaders — are never exempt, whatever the title says. Outside salespeople on commission, doctors, lawyers, and teachers skip the salary floor entirely. Police and fire fall under 207(k) work periods, where overtime starts past 171 hours (police) or 212 hours (fire) per 28 days.
Small size does not exempt an employer either. The FLSA reaches any business with $500,000+ in annual volume or any employee touching interstate commerce — phones, mail, card payments. A five-person shop paying 'salary, no overtime' to a 55-hour office manager is usually just violating the law. Run the salary per hour conversion before accepting a salaried offer.
Shift Structures: 10s and 12s Without Daily OT
Because the trigger is weekly, Georgia employers can build compressed schedules at straight time: four 10-hour days (40 hours, no OT) or three 12s (36 hours, no OT) stay legal, and even two brutal 20-hour days would skirt the premium if the week landed under 40. Daily overtime lives in states like California and Colorado, not here.
Longer weeks pay fast under FLSA math. Five 12-hour shifts total 60 hours — 20 of them overtime — and on a $30.00 base that is 40 x $30.00 + 20 x $45.00 = $2,100.00 gross for the week. The same hours on an $18.00 blended rate would pay $1,260.00 in straight time plus $270.00 in premium.
Rotating 8s versus fixed 12s changes family life, not overtime rights — both structures owe the premium on the same weekly total. Use the 8 hour shift calculator for coverage planning and the 12 hour shift calculator for the compressed-schedule paycheck math that follows.
Records, Claims, and Liquidated Damages
Georgia's Department of Labor does not enforce overtime — claims go to the U.S. DOL Wage and Hour Division (complaints are free and need no lawyer) or to a private lawsuit. The FLSA statute of limitations runs two years, three for willful violations, and each unpaid week can be doubled as liquidated damages.
Employers must keep time records, but when they do not, employee logs, schedules, texts, and GPS history can reconstruct the hours — and courts hold sloppy records against the employer, not the worker. Photograph your schedule, keep a daily log, and if you are paid every two weeks, run the biweekly pay calculator to check the combined figure against your two-week total.
Before filing anywhere, nail the arithmetic: exact hours, the blended regular rate, and the premium gap per week. The tipped example above — shorted $15.36/week for two years — supports a $3,194.88 claim once doubled. The California overtime calculator shows how daily-OT states compute the same workweek differently, useful if your work spanned state lines.