Nevada Overtime Laws: The Employer's Complete Guide (2026)

Most states follow one overtime rule: pay time and a half after 40 hours in a week. Nevada overtime laws, sometimes called NV OT laws or Nevada OT rules, follow two.

On top of the standard weekly rule, Nevada requires overtime after 8 hours in a single workday, but only for employees earning less than $18.00 per hour. This guide covers Nevada overtime laws in plain terms: both triggers, the $18/hour threshold, how to calculate it correctly for overnight shifts, tipped employees, and bonus earners, and what happens when you get it wrong.

Understanding Nevada overtime laws (also referred to as Nevada OT laws) starts with recognizing there are two separate tracks: daily hours worked in a single 24-hour period, and total hours worked in a week.

What is overtime in Nevada? Under NRS 608.018, Nevada employers must pay non-exempt employees 1.5 times their regular rate of pay when overtime is triggered, either after 8 hours in a single workday (for employees earning under $18.00/hour) or after 40 hours in a workweek.

That daily trigger, sometimes called the Nevada 24 hour rule or Nevada 24-hour rule, is what separates Nevada overtime law from most states. The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) only requires overtime after 40 hours in a workweek. Nevada adds the daily rule for lower-wage workers. Per NRS 608.018, when state and federal law differ, whichever provides greater protection to the employee governs.

The $18.00/hour threshold is the dividing line. Employees below it are subject to both triggers. Employees at or above it are only subject to the weekly rule. That figure is exactly 1.5x Nevada's minimum wage of $12.00/hour, confirmed in the Nevada Labor Commissioner's 2024 Daily Overtime Bulletin. If Nevada's minimum wage rises in future years, the threshold will shift with it.

One thing Nevada law does not require: double time. Overtime is calculated at 1.5x the regular rate, and that's the ceiling under both state and federal law. For context on how Nevada compares with other states, see our overtime laws by state guide.

Nevada overtime laws define a workday through NRS 608.0126, the basis of what's known as the Nevada 24-hour rule: it's not a calendar day. It's a 24-hour period that begins when an employee clocks in. An employee who starts at 2:00pm works until 2:00pm the following day. This matters most for overnight workers, split shifts, and anyone whose shift crosses midnight. Nevada overtime laws 24-hour period rules mean the day resets on each employee's clock-in, not the calendar.

Most employers make one mistake here: they treat midnight as the start of a new workday. Nevada law doesn't. The workday resets based on each employee's individual clock-in time, not when the clock strikes twelve.

Take a 10:00pm clock-in with a 7:30am clock-out: 9.5 hours worked. Daily OT kicked in at 6:00am, not at midnight.

Daily overtime applies to non-exempt employees earning less than $18.00/hour. In Nevada's economy, that covers a wide range: hourly restaurant workers, retail associates, hotel housekeeping, healthcare aides, and casino-floor employees.

Daily overtime does not apply to employees earning $18.00/hour or more. Those employees are still owed weekly overtime after 40 hours, but the daily trigger doesn't touch them.

It also doesn't apply to employees on a valid 4-10 schedule. Under NRS 608.018, an employer and employee can mutually agree in writing to a four-day, 10-hour workweek, which waives the daily trigger. The agreement must be voluntary; requiring an employee to sign as a condition of employment likely invalidates it. Even with a valid waiver, weekly overtime still applies if total hours exceed 40.

How does overtime work in Nevada? How much is overtime pay in Nevada? Overtime pay in Nevada is always 1.5x the employee's regular rate of pay. Per 29 CFR Part 778, the regular rate isn't just the hourly wage. It includes non-discretionary bonuses, shift differentials, and commissions earned in that workweek. That distinction matters more than most employers realize.

Employee earns $15.00/hour and works a 9-hour shift.

Same employee at $15.00/hour. No single day exceeds 8 hours, but the week totals 45 hours.

This is the question most guides skip, and it's one Nevada employers ask often.

If an employee earns under $18/hour and a single week produces both daily overtime hours and weekly overtime hours, do you owe both? The answer is no. As of June 2025, the Nevada Labor Commissioner has settled this directly.

Advisory Opinion AO-2025-05 (June 25, 2025), issued by Labor Commissioner Brett K. Harris, confirms: employers pay daily overtime OR weekly overtime, whichever produces the greater total for the employee. The two do not add together.

The Commissioner's operative language: the statute requires an employer to pay "daily overtime or weekly overtime." When in doubt, apply whichever calculation benefits the employee more.

Some employers believe the triggers stack, which leads to overpaying. Others assume weekly OT cancels daily OT entirely, which leads to underpaying. Neither is correct.

Employee earns $14.00/hour. They clock in at 9:00pm and clock out at 6:30am the next morning, logging 9.5 hours total.

Their 24-hour workday started at 9:00pm. Daily OT kicks in at 5:00am, 8 hours after clock-in.

The mistake: employers who track by calendar day log this as 7 hours (9:00pm to midnight) and 6.5 hours (midnight to 6:30am). Neither segment alone crosses 8 hours. On paper, no daily OT looks owed. But they worked 9.5 consecutive hours from a single clock-in, and that's the only figure Nevada law recognizes.

Per 29 CFR Part 778, non-discretionary bonuses (those tied to hitting a metric or promised in advance) must be included in the regular rate before calculating overtime. This is the second most common OT error after the midnight workday mistake.

Employee earns $15.00/hour, worked 48 hours in a week with at least one day over 8 hours, and earned a $60 performance bonus.

Step 1: Adjusted regular rate: (48 hrs × $15) + $60 = $780 ÷ 48 hrs = $16.25/hour

Step 2: OT premium on hours beyond 40: 0.5 × $16.25 × 8 hours = $65.00

The base rate for all 48 hours is already covered. You're only adding the half-time premium on top. Skip the bonus in the rate, and you're calculating that premium on $15.00 instead of $16.25, underpaying by $5.00 on every affected paycheck. With annual wage growth running at 6.8% across Homebase small businesses, per the Homebase Main Street Health Report, that gap compounds as pay rates rise.

See our guide for more on how non-discretionary bonuses affect payroll.

Employee earns $20.00/hour, works a 9-hour day, and logs 45 total hours for the week.

Manual overtime calculations leave room for the edge cases covered above: a bonus that shifts the rate, an overnight boundary, a week where both triggers fire. Payroll in Homebase runs these calculations from real timesheets automatically, so the math is right before a check goes out. Try Homebase free →

Nevada has long prohibited applying tips as a credit toward the minimum wage under NRS 608.160. Ballot Question 2, effective July 1, 2024, went further by eliminating the old two-tier minimum wage system entirely. Now there's one rate for every employee: $12.00/hour, regardless of tips.

That means tipped employees earning $12.00/hour base are $6.00 below the daily overtime threshold. Daily overtime applies to them after 8 hours in any 24-hour period.

A server earning $12.00/hour base who works a 10-hour shift:

Tips received are not included in the regular rate for overtime purposes. Only wages paid by the employer count.

This is a meaningful departure from federal law. Under the FLSA, employers can take a tip credit and pay tipped workers as little as $2.13/hour in base wages before tips. In Nevada, that's not permitted. Every tipped worker receives the full $12.00/hour in wages, and all of them are subject to daily overtime.

For further detail on Nevada's wage rules for tipped workers, see the Nevada Labor Commissioner's FAQ.

What about Las Vegas overtime laws? Las Vegas follows Nevada state law. There are no additional city-level overtime requirements for Las Vegas employers. But the practical stakes are higher there than almost anywhere in the state. Hospitality, food and drink, and entertainment all power Las Vegas, and all pay workers well below the $18.00 threshold. Nationally, Food & Drink workers average $14.24/hour and Entertainment workers average $15.20/hour. In Las Vegas, long weekend shifts and double-coverage days push daily OT exposure up fast.

Not every employee is covered by overtime law in Nevada. Under NRS 608.018(3) and the FLSA exemption framework, four primary exemptions apply. To qualify, an employee must meet both a salary threshold and a duties test. Salary alone is not enough.

Executive exemption: The employee's primary duty is managing the business or a recognized department. They direct at least two full-time employees and have real authority in hiring or firing decisions, not just the title of "manager."

Administrative exemption: The employee performs non-manual work directly related to business operations and exercises genuine discretion and independent judgment on significant matters. Clerical roles and customer service leads who follow set policies do not typically qualify.

Professional exemption: The employee's work requires advanced knowledge in a field of science or learning (typically through a specialized degree), or creative talent in a recognized artistic field.

Outside sales exemption: The employee's primary duty is making sales away from the employer's place of business.

Salary threshold: The FLSA currently requires $684/week, the 2019 standard formally restored by DOL action in May 2026 after courts vacated the Biden-era increases. For a current breakdown of how the threshold works, see our federal overtime salary threshold guide.

Both the salary level and the duties test must be met. The most common mistake: assuming a job title or salary creates an exemption on its own. It doesn't. A salaried employee who fails the duties test is still owed overtime.

Mandatory overtime is generally legal under Nevada overtime laws. For mandatory overtime, Nevada employers can require extra hours, but every mandatory overtime Nevada shift must still be compensated at the correct rate. Under state law, employers can require employees to work more than 8 hours in a day or 40 hours in a week. Employees cannot be required to give up overtime pay, but they can be required to work overtime as long as it's compensated at the correct rate.

One exception: employees on a written 4-10 schedule agreed to a different arrangement. Requiring them to work past 10 hours on those days likely voids the waiver. It must stay voluntary under NRS 608.018 to hold.

Healthcare workers may have additional considerations under federal OSHA guidelines, but no Nevada law prohibits mandatory overtime for most private-sector employees. For a broader look at mandatory overtime laws across states, see our full guide.

Most Nevada overtime law compliance problems don't start with bad intent. They start with gaps in what an owner knows they need to track. These are the six that tend to surface first.

Mistake 1 — Ignoring the daily overtime trigger. Many employers track only weekly hours and miss individual days where an employee earning under $18/hour worked more than 8 hours. That's unpaid daily overtime accumulating shift by shift, and it can go undetected for months.

Mistake 2 — Using midnight as the workday start. Per NRS 608.0126, the workday begins when the employee clocks in. Using midnight leads to undercounts for overnight workers and split-shift employees.

Mistake 3 — Not knowing which employees are under $18/hour. If you don't know who the daily trigger applies to, you can't track it. This should be a field in your payroll setup, not something you calculate by hand each pay period.

Mistake 4 — Assuming salaried means exempt. Salary is one part of the test. If the duties test isn't met under NRS 608.018 and the FLSA, the employee is owed overtime regardless of how they're classified.

Mistake 5 — Leaving bonuses out of the regular rate. Non-discretionary bonuses, shift differentials, and production incentives must be included in the regular rate before calculating the overtime premium. Leaving them out understates the rate on every affected paycheck.

Mistake 6 — Only keeping weekly totals, not daily records. Per NRS 608.115, Nevada employers must keep wage records for at least two years. If an employee files a wage claim and you can't produce daily clock-in/out data, the burden of proof shifts in their favor. The Nevada Labor Commissioner may calculate back wages based on the employee's account of hours worked, not yours. Penalties under NRS 608.195 can reach $5,000 per violation, and any violation of NRS 608.195 is classified as a misdemeanor.

What a claim looks like in practice: a former employee files a complaint with the Nevada Labor Commissioner. An investigator requests your time records. If those records are weekly summaries only, you can't verify whether any given shift triggered daily overtime. That gap becomes the employee's advantage.

Per NRS 608.115, Nevada employers must maintain wage records for a minimum of two years. The FLSA extends payroll records to three years. Keep the longer standard to satisfy both.

At minimum, records for each employee should include:

Daily records matter specifically in Nevada because the Nevada daily overtime trigger cannot be verified from weekly totals alone. You need timestamps, not summaries. Cloud-stored records are far harder to dispute than spreadsheets that can be edited after the fact. See our guide on common timesheet errors for the recording mistakes that tend to create the biggest problems.

Turnover among hourly workers is running 6.5% higher year-over-year. More churn means more new employees to classify, more onboarding gaps, and more compliance exposure building quietly. The time to get records right is before someone leaves, not after they file.

"Now it takes me about five minutes to run payroll every week. I go through the time sheets, do a quick vet of everything. If everything looks good, then I click click click, I'm through payroll." — Primo Stropoli, Owner, Tetta's Market

That kind of speed only happens when daily and weekly hours are already accurate before payroll opens, not corrected during it. Clean records aren't just a compliance requirement. They're what make payday simple.

Daily records are the first thing a Labor Commissioner asks for in a wage claim. When timesheets are stored in Homebase, they're secure, cloud-based, and separated by day and week, so you have what you need without building it manually. See how Homebase tracks overtime →

Flag this in your payroll setup, not in a spreadsheet you update manually. Every time a raise pushes someone above $18.00/hour, their overtime status changes. Small business wages are up 47.4% since January 2022. Employees who were comfortably below the threshold a few years ago may be crossing it now. Set a review trigger so the classification doesn't drift out of date quietly.

This single change corrects the most common overtime miscalculation in Nevada. If your time clock defaults to calendar-day tracking, check whether it's measuring from each employee's clock-in, not from midnight.

Weekly summaries won't hold up in a Labor Commissioner audit. You need individual clock-in and clock-out records for every shift, every day, for every employee, stored in a format that can't easily be edited after the fact.

A verbal agreement doesn't create a valid waiver under NRS 608.018. The agreement must be in writing, signed before the schedule begins, and voluntary. Requiring an employee to sign as a condition of employment likely invalidates the waiver.

Don't rely on job titles or pay structure. Run each exempt classification against the duties test at least annually and whenever roles change. A "manager" who no longer directs two full-time employees or whose responsibilities have shifted may no longer qualify.

Shift bonuses, production incentives, or any bonus tied to a metric must be included in the regular rate before calculating overtime, even if paid at week's end. For the full breakdown, see our guide to non-discretionary vs. discretionary bonuses.

Two years is the Nevada minimum under NRS 608.115; the FLSA requires three for payroll records. Keep the longer standard, and make sure records include daily totals, not just weekly summaries.

Overtime laws in Nevada run deeper than most employers expect, and the daily trigger is where most payroll mistakes happen. The two triggers, the $18.00/hour threshold, and the clock-in-based workday in overtime laws Nevada enforces are all manageable, but only if you're tracking the right numbers.

Three things to carry out of this guide:

"It's hard to put a number on it, but I'm saving hundreds of hours. Once you include all the little things I could get sucked into that Homebase is just taking care of, it's saving me a whole lot of time." — Primo Stropoli, Owner, Tetta's Market

When compliance is handled at the time-tracking layer, payroll stops being the place where problems surface. Automatic time tracking and overtime alerts in Homebase mean your records are accurate before payday comes, so you can focus on your team, not your timesheets. Try Homebase free →

Nevada overtime rules require both, not one or the other. Under NRS 608.018, employees earning under $18.00/hour are owed overtime after 8 hours in a single workday and after 40 hours in a workweek; employees at or above $18.00/hour are subject only to the 40-hour weekly trigger.

The Nevada 24-hour rule, sometimes called the Nevada labor laws 24-hour rule, refers to how Nevada defines a "workday" for overtime purposes. Under NRS 608.0126, a workday is a 24-hour period that starts when an employee clocks in, not at midnight, so an employee who starts at 6:00pm works a legal "day" that ends at 6:00pm the following evening.

Overtime pay is mandatory for employees earning under $18.00/hour who work more than 8 hours in a single 24-hour period, per NRS 608.018 and the Nevada Labor Commissioner's 2024 Daily Overtime Bulletin. Employees at or above $18.00/hour are subject only to the standard 40-hour weekly overtime rule.

Nevada double time laws do not exist: Nevada does not require double-time pay under NRS 608.018 or federal law. Overtime is calculated at 1.5 times the employee's regular rate for all qualifying hours; some employers offer double time voluntarily, and our guide to calculating double time pay covers what that looks like in practice.

Employees cannot waive the right to overtime pay; it's a legal entitlement under Nevada law. The one exception under NRS 608.018 is a written 4-10 agreement: a four-day, 10-hour workweek that waives the daily overtime trigger but not the weekly one when total hours exceed 40.

Salaried employees can be owed overtime depending on their duties and salary level. Per the FLSA exemption framework, both the salary threshold ($684/week) and the applicable duties test must be met; a salaried employee who fails the duties test for executive, administrative, or professional work is still owed overtime under NRS 608.018.

Nevada follows the FLSA but goes further for lower-wage workers, adding a daily 8-hour overtime trigger for employees earning under $18.00/hour on top of the standard 40-hour weekly rule. Per NRS 608.018, when state and federal law differ, whichever provides greater protection to the employee applies.

Overtime in Nevada is calculated at 1.5 times the employee's regular rate of pay, which includes base hourly wages plus non-discretionary bonuses and shift differentials, per 29 CFR Part 778. The regular rate must be calculated first, then the overtime premium is applied to hours that exceed the daily or weekly threshold.

Under NRS 608.195, the Nevada Labor Commissioner can impose administrative penalties of up to $5,000 per violation for failure to pay wages, and any violation of that section is classified as a misdemeanor. Employees may also file a wage claim to recover unpaid overtime, and employers can be ordered to pay attorney's fees under NRS 608.140.

Mandatory overtime is generally legal in Nevada for private-sector employers. State law does not prohibit requiring employees to work beyond 8 hours in a day or 40 hours in a week, but overtime pay is required whenever those thresholds are crossed; employees cannot be required to forgo that compensation, only to work the additional hours.

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