How to Calculate Hours Worked (2026)

Hours worked are the time between your clock-in and clock-out, minus any unpaid meal break, added up for every shift in the workweek. The arithmetic takes a minute. The part that costs people money is knowing what counts as work time and what does not, because that is where employer systems quietly drop minutes. This guide covers both.

The basic method

1. Write down the clock-in and clock-out time for each shift.
2. Subtract the clock-in from the clock-out to get time on the clock.
3. Subtract any unpaid meal break. Do not subtract paid rest breaks.
4. Convert the result to decimal hours.
5. Add the days together for the workweek.

A shift from 8:05 AM to 4:35 PM is 8 hours 30 minutes on the clock. Take off a 30-minute unpaid lunch and you worked 8 hours. In decimals, that is 8.00.

Subtracting times without mistakes

The cleanest way to subtract times is to convert both to minutes since midnight. 8:05 AM is 8 × 60 + 5 = 485 minutes. 4:35 PM is 16 × 60 + 35 = 995 minutes. The difference is 510 minutes, which is 8 hours 30 minutes.

If you prefer to work in hours and minutes, borrow the way you would in long subtraction. From 4:35 PM, take 8:05 AM: 35 minus 5 is 30 minutes, 16 minus 8 is 8 hours. When the end minutes are smaller than the start minutes, borrow 60. From 5:10 PM take 8:45 AM: 70 minus 45 is 25 minutes, 16 minus 8 is 8 hours, so 8 hours 25 minutes.

For an overnight shift, add 24 hours to the clock-out time first. 10:00 PM to 6:00 AM becomes 22:00 to 30:00, which is 8 hours.

Converting minutes to decimal hours

Payroll works in decimals because the decimal multiplies cleanly by your hourly rate. Divide the minutes by 60.

So 8 hours 25 minutes is 8.42 hours. At $18 an hour that is $151.50 for the shift. A common error is reading 8:25 as 8.25 hours, which would short you 10 minutes.

Breaks: paid rest, unpaid meals

Federal rules draw a clear line. Short rest breaks, usually 5 to 20 minutes, count as hours worked and must be paid. Bona fide meal periods, ordinarily 30 minutes or longer, do not count as hours worked, but only if you are completely relieved of duty. If you eat at your desk while answering the phone, or a manager keeps pulling you back to the floor, that is not a bona fide meal period and the time counts.

The practical trap is automatic deduction. Many time clocks subtract 30 minutes a day whether or not you took the break. If you worked through lunch three times this week, you are owed 90 minutes that the system removed. Record the days you worked through, in writing, at the time.

What counts as hours worked

Hours worked is broader than time on the clock. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, it includes all time you are required or permitted to work, whether the employer asked for it or merely allowed it.

• Pre-shift and post-shift work. Setting up a station, pulling on required protective gear at the site, counting a drawer after closing. These are hours worked when they are part of the job.
• Waiting time. If you are engaged to wait, such as standing by at the site because a delivery is late, that is work time. Being completely free to leave and use the time for yourself is not.
• Travel. Ordinary home-to-work commuting is not hours worked. Travel between job sites during the day is. Travel that is part of a one-day assignment out of town is, minus your normal commute.
• Working from home or after hours. Answering work messages, finishing reports, or taking calls at home is work time if the employer knows or should know you are doing it.
• Training and meetings. Required training during or outside your shift is hours worked unless it is voluntary, outside work hours, unrelated to the job, and no work is done during it.

What does not count: paid time off, holidays not worked, and sick days. They may be paid, but they are not hours worked, and they do not count toward overtime.

Multiple punches in a day

Split shifts and mid-shift errands produce more than one clock-in per day. Calculate each pair separately and add them. A server who works 11:00 AM to 2:30 PM and then 5:00 PM to 10:15 PM has 3 hours 30 minutes plus 5 hours 15 minutes, which is 8 hours 45 minutes, or 8.75 hours. The gap in the afternoon is not hours worked if you were free to leave.

Rounding

Employers may round punches to the nearest 5 minutes, tenth of an hour or quarter hour, provided the practice does not, over time, fail to pay for all the time actually worked. Rounding must cut both ways. If your 7:53 clock-in rounds up to 8:00 but your 4:07 clock-out rounds down to 4:00, you lose 14 minutes a day with nothing coming back, and that is the pattern to watch for. Keep your actual punch times alongside the rounded ones so you can compare them over a pay period.

Adding up the week

Add the daily decimal totals for each workweek. The workweek is your employer's fixed 168-hour period, not necessarily Monday to Sunday, and it is the unit that matters for overtime. Hours over 40 in that week are overtime hours.

Here is a full week for a worker with a 30-minute unpaid lunch on each full day:

The total is 43.08 hours, so 3.08 hours of overtime. Note Wednesday: the lunch was not deducted because it was worked through. Had the system auto-deducted it, the week would show 42.58 hours and the worker would be short half an hour of overtime pay.

Keep your own record

Employers must keep accurate records of hours worked under federal law, but the record they keep is theirs to edit. The Department of Labor recommends that workers keep their own log of start times, end times and breaks. A dated record in your own hand, or on your own phone, is what settles the argument when a stub comes up short.