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Scheduling laws in the United States

Federal law regulates what a shift costs, not what it looks like. Here is every federal rule that changes the shape of a schedule, and the much longer list of things it hands to the states.

9 binding rules3 official guidance3 checked absencesSources last read 6 August 2026

How the layers work here

Federal law is a floor with a conspicuous hole in it: the Fair Labor Standards Act sets no meal or rest break entitlement at all, and no limit on hours in a day for adults. Almost everything that shapes a shift is state law, so a federal answer on its own is not an answer. Pick a state.

Two states are covered so far: California and Florida. Everywhere else, treat this page as the floor and read the state code.

Enforcement: U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division (Fair Labor Standards Act); Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSH Act)

What this jurisdiction regulates

Federal U.S. law regulates the price of a schedule, not its shape. For workers 16 and older the Fair Labor Standards Act sets no maximum daily or weekly hours, no minimum rest between shifts, no night-work limit and no break entitlement; it only requires 1.5x pay for hours over 40 in a fixed 168-hour workweek. The only federal rules that genuinely constrain what a schedule may look like apply to minors under 16, to 17-year-olds who drive, and to a few sector-specific overtime alternatives (hospital 8/80, public safety 7(k)). Heat is enforced through the OSH Act General Duty Clause and an inspection-targeting program; the proposed federal heat standard is still not final.

Federal law prices a schedule, it does not shape one

The rule most American employers believe they are following does not exist. There is no federal meal break, no federal rest break, no federal cap on hours in a day, no federal minimum gap between shifts and no federal advance-notice requirement. The Fair Labor Standards Act reaches an ordinary schedule at one point only: hours past forty in a fixed workweek cost half again as much. Everything else that makes a roster humane or unlawful is written somewhere other than Washington.

That leaves the break in a strange position. Federal law will not make an employer give one, but it has firm views about the one that is given. An interval of five to twenty minutes is paid time, so it counts toward the forty-hour line and can be the reason a week tips into overtime. A meal period of thirty minutes or more is unpaid only while the employee is genuinely relieved of duty, and someone eating at the till or beside the machine is working. The intuition inverts: withholding the break costs nothing, and giving it is the thing that moves money.

The other half of the trap is the workweek boundary itself. A workweek is a fixed and regularly recurring period of 168 hours, it may begin on any day at any hour, and it may never be averaged against its neighbour. A rotation that reads as a flat forty hours a week on the board can manufacture guaranteed overtime purely because of where that boundary was drawn through it, and the boundary is not something an employer may move week to week to chase the cheaper answer.

Where federal law does constrain shape, it does so for narrow populations. Fourteen and fifteen year olds get hour caps and a curfew read off a school calendar. Seventeen year olds who drive get daylight-only, occasional-driving limits with nine separate conditions attached. Hospitals and public safety agencies get alternative work periods that swap the seven-day week for a fourteen or twenty-eight day one, which changes when overtime starts rather than whether it exists. Heat is handled through a general duty to control recognised hazards, which binds and carries no number at all, alongside an inspection-targeting programme and a proposed standard still not in force.

The practical consequence is that a national schedule template does not exist in this country. Two identically shaped ten-hour retail shifts, one in Los Angeles and one in Orlando, are governed by almost entirely different rules, and none of the difference between them is federal. The two states below were built first because they sit at opposite ends of that range: California prices nearly every schedule shape it dislikes, and Florida has legislated its own silence.

The answers that are absences

Three of the fifteen federal entries here are absences that were checked rather than gaps that were left. They are the reason a search that starts at the federal level almost never ends there.

Before the rules, the labels

Every rule below carries one of three labels, and they are not interchangeable. Blurring binding law into official guidance would push a reader either into over-complying with something advisory or into dismissing the whole page once they discovered the difference. A checked absence is the third answer, and on several of these pages it is the one people came for.

Rest and meal breaks

3 rules in United States (federal)

Rest and meal breaks

Sleeping period exclusion on shifts of 24 hours or more

Binding law

Where an employee is required to be on duty for 24 hours or more, the employer and employee may agree to exclude bona fide meal periods and a bona fide regularly scheduled sleeping period of not more than 8 hours from hours worked, provided adequate sleeping facilities are furnished by the employer and the employee can usually enjoy an uninterrupted night's sleep. If the sleeping period is longer than 8 hours, only 8 hours may be credited. Any interruption by a call to duty must be counted as hours worked, and if the period is interrupted to such an extent that the employee cannot get a reasonable night's sleep, the entire period must be counted as hours worked.

Who this covers

Employees required to be on duty for 24 hours or more, typically residential care, live-in staff, some emergency services and remote-site crews. Requires an express or implied agreementโ€ฆRead the full scope

Employees required to be on duty for 24 hours or more, typically residential care, live-in staff, some emergency services and remote-site crews. Requires an express or implied agreement with the employee; where no express or implied agreement to the contrary is present, the 8 hours of sleeping time and the lunch periods constitute hours worked.

How to encode this in a schedule

Hard structural constraint on shifts of 24 hours or more: to exclude sleep from hours worked the schedule must contain a designated, regularly scheduled sleeping interval of no more than 8 hours. The scheduler must also track interruptions against that interval, because each call to duty is itself compensable and enough interruption voids the exclusion for the entire period.

Trigger shift hours
24
Max excludable sleep hours
8

The mistake employers make

The exclusion is available only at 24 hours or more. Employers apply it to 16-hour or 20-hour shifts, where 29 CFR 785.21 governs instead and provides that an employee on duty for less than 24 hours is working even though permitted to sleep, regardless of whether sleeping facilities are furnished.

Why this label and not another

The 5-hour figure previously carried in this rule has been split out into us-federal-rest-breaks-24-hour-duty-sleep-5-hour-enforcement and reclassified as guidance, because 29 CFR 785.22(b) attributes it to the Wage and Hour Divisions 'for enforcement purposes' rather than stating it as the regulation's operative threshold. The regulation's own standard is the qualitative 'reasonable night's sleep'.

Citation: 29 CFR 785.22(a) and the first two sentences of 785.22(b) (Duty of 24 hours or more)

Electronic Code of Federal Regulations (eCFR), National Archives and Records Administrationlast read 6 August 2026

Rest and meal breaks

Wage and Hour enforcement rule: under 5 hours of sleep voids the whole exclusion

Official guidance

29 CFR 785.22(b) states, after setting out the reasonable-night's-sleep standard: 'For enforcement purposes, the Divisions have adopted the rule that if the employee cannot get at least 5 hours' sleep during the scheduled period the entire time is working time.' The 5-hour figure is therefore the agency's administrative bright line for what counts as a reasonable night's sleep, published in the regulation but expressly framed as an enforcement rule.

Who this covers

Same population as us-federal-rest-breaks-24-hour-duty-sleep. This entry exists separately because it is the enforcement position of the Wage and Hour Divisions rather than an operative regulatory threshold, and a court applying 29 CFR 785.22(b) directly is applying the 'reasonable night's sleep' standard.

How to encode this in a schedule

Safe to encode as the practical threshold, because it is the number the enforcing agency will apply, but it should be modelled as an agency bright line rather than as a statutory cliff. Track interruptions against the scheduled sleeping interval: callouts totalling enough to leave under 5 hours of sleep flip all 8 hours back into paid hours worked, an all-or-nothing cliff rather than a proportional adjustment. An employer that clears 5 hours is not automatically safe, since the underlying regulatory test remains qualitative.

Min uninterrupted sleep hours
5

The mistake employers make

The 5-hour rule is misread as proportional: 4 hours and 45 minutes of actual sleep does not mean 4 hours and 45 minutes are paid, it means all 8 hours are paid. The second misreading is treating 5 hours as a statutory floor an employer can litigate against; it is an enforcement convention layered on the regulation's 'reasonable night's sleep' test.

Why this label and not another

Split out of the parent rule on adversarial review and downgraded from 'hard'. The figure is printed in binding regulation text but is attributed to agency enforcement practice, not stated as the regulation's own operative threshold.

Citation: 29 CFR 785.22(b) (Interruptions of sleep), enforcement sentence

Electronic Code of Federal Regulations (eCFR), National Archives and Records Administrationlast read 6 August 2026

Rest and meal breaks

No federal break entitlement; short breaks are paid, bona fide meal periods are not

No requirement

Federal law does not require an employer to provide any meal or rest break, at any shift length. It regulates only how a break is paid if one is given: rest periods of short duration, running from 5 minutes to about 20 minutes, must be counted as hours worked and paid, while a bona fide meal period, ordinarily 30 minutes or more, during which the employee is completely relieved from duty for the purpose of eating a regular meal, is not worktime and need not be paid.

Who this covers

All non-exempt employees covered by the FLSA, at any shift length. The FLSA creates no right to a break of any kind. State law is the only source of a break entitlement in the United States, and many but not all states impose one; the applicable state jurisdiction must be consulted for the actual duration and trigger.

How to encode this in a schedule

No federal break constraint exists to encode; any break rule in a U.S. schedule must be sourced from state law or from the employer's own policy. What the scheduler must encode is the hours-worked consequence: a non-working interval of 5 to 20 minutes still counts toward the 40-hour overtime threshold, while an unbroken interval of 30 minutes or more in which the employee is fully relieved of duty is subtracted from it. A scheduler that models a 30-minute meal as unpaid must be able to prove the employee performed no duties during it, including passive duties such as remaining at a workstation.

Short break min minutes
5
Short break max minutes
20
Bona fide meal min minutes
30
Required break minutes
0

The mistake employers make

Employers assume the FLSA guarantees a lunch break and that an automatic 30-minute deduction is therefore safe. Neither holds. The deduction is lawful only if the employee is completely relieved from duty; 29 CFR 785.19(a) states that an office employee required to eat at a desk, or a factory worker required to be at a machine, is working while eating. An auto-deduct applied to a worker who never actually left duty converts unpaid minutes into hours worked and can retroactively push the week past 40 hours. Note also that 785.19(a) allows a shorter period to qualify as a bona fide meal period 'under special conditions', so 30 minutes is the ordinary case rather than an absolute floor, and 785.19(b) confirms the employee need not be permitted to leave the premises.

Why this figure does not travel

Not comparable with any other jurisdiction's break figures. breakMinutes is deliberately absent and requiredBreakMinutes is 0, because no U.S. federal break entitlement exists at all. The 5, 20 and 30 minute figures here classify a break the employer chose to give for pay purposes; they are not triggers or entitlements.

Why this label and not another

Downgraded from 'hard' on adversarial review. The legal claim is correct and is grounded in binding regulation text, but the rule states the absence of an entitlement. The compensability consequences below are real and binding; they are payroll rules, not scheduling constraints. Cross-file note: the compensability half of this rule (short breaks are paid, a meal period is unpaid only if the employee is fully relieved of duty) is a binding pay obligation and is carried with constraintType 'hard' as us-florida-rest-breaks-federal-paid-break-boundary, which applies nationally, not only in Florida. The split is deliberate: each entry is typed by its headline claim. This one's headline claim is an absence; that one's is an affirmative pay duty.

Citation: 29 CFR 785.18 (Rest) and 29 CFR 785.19 (Meal)

Electronic Code of Federal Regulations (eCFR), National Archives and Records Administrationlast read 6 August 2026

Hours and overtime limits

5 rules in United States (federal)

Hours and overtime limits

Fixed 168-hour workweek; hours may never be averaged across weeks

Binding law

An employee's workweek is a fixed and regularly recurring period of 168 hours, being seven consecutive 24-hour periods. It need not coincide with the calendar week and may begin on any day and at any hour, but once established it remains fixed regardless of the schedule of hours worked, and may be changed only if the change is intended to be permanent and is not designed to evade the overtime requirements. Each workweek stands alone: hours may not be averaged over two or more weeks, so 30 hours one week and 50 the next produces overtime in the second week, not zero.

Who this covers

All non-exempt employees. The employer chooses the workweek boundary, and may set a single workweek for an establishment as a whole or different workweeks for different employees or groups, but once set it is fixed.

How to encode this in a schedule

Hard constraint on how the optimiser aggregates hours: overtime must be computed per fixed 168-hour window, never on a rolling 7-day window and never averaged across a 2-week pay period. The position of the workweek boundary is a real scheduling lever, because the same rotation costs different amounts of overtime depending on where the boundary falls, and the boundary must be stored per employee or per group rather than assumed to be Sunday midnight.

Workweek hours
168
Workweek days
7
Reference weeks
1

The mistake employers make

Biweekly payroll tempts employers to average: 50 hours then 30 hours looks like 80 hours in the period and feels like no overtime. It is 10 hours of overtime. The mirror-image error is compressed and continuous rotations such as 4-on/4-off or 2-2-3, where a pattern that averages exactly 42 hours can straddle the workweek boundary and produce far more overtime than the average suggests. Moving the boundary is legitimate scheduling design; moving it repeatedly to dodge overtime is not, because the change must be intended to be permanent.

Citation: 29 CFR 778.104 (Each workweek stands alone) and 29 CFR 778.105 (Determining the workweek)

Electronic Code of Federal Regulations (eCFR), National Archives and Records Administrationlast read 6 August 2026

Hours and overtime limits

Hospital and residential care 8/80 overtime alternative

Binding law

A hospital or residential care institution may, by agreement or understanding arrived at with the employee before performance of the work, accept a work period of 14 consecutive days in place of the workweek of 7 consecutive days for purposes of overtime computation. Under that arrangement overtime at not less than 1.5x is owed for hours worked in excess of 8 in any workday and in excess of 80 in the 14-day period. Both triggers operate independently: daily overtime is owed whether or not more than 80 hours are worked in the period, and the over-80 overtime is owed whether or not any daily overtime arose.

Who this covers

Employers engaged in the operation of a hospital, or of an establishment which is an institution primarily engaged in the care of the sick, the aged, or the mentally ill or defective whoโ€ฆRead the full scope

Employers engaged in the operation of a hospital, or of an establishment which is an institution primarily engaged in the care of the sick, the aged, or the mentally ill or defective who reside on the premises. Requires an agreement or understanding with the employee reached before the work is performed. It is optional; without an agreement the ordinary 40-hour workweek rule applies. The agreement need not be in writing, but if it is not, a special record of it must be kept under 29 CFR part 516.

How to encode this in a schedule

Alternative overtime model the scheduler must select per employer and per employee, not per shift. When 8/80 is elected, the optimiser evaluates two thresholds simultaneously, daily over 8 and period over 80, and both trigger independently, so a 12-hour nursing shift generates 4 overtime hours even in a period totalling under 80. This is the reason 8/80 is often the wrong choice for a unit running three 12-hour shifts a week, which is cheaper under the standard 40-hour workweek.

Work period days
14
Daily overtime threshold hours
8
Period overtime threshold hours
80
Overtime multiplier
1.5

The mistake employers make

Employers adopt 8/80 believing it suppresses overtime, then staff the unit on 12-hour shifts and pay more than they would have under the plain 40-hour rule, because every shift breaches the 8-hour daily trigger. The agreement must also predate the work, so 8/80 cannot be applied retroactively to a period already worked. 29 CFR 778.601(c) adds a further constraint that is easy to miss: the election must be made with the intent to use the 14-day period permanently or for a substantial period, and switching between the 14-day period and the workweek to take advantage of whichever is cheaper for a particular schedule is not permissible.

Why this figure does not travel

dailyOvertimeThresholdHours 8 here is a pay threshold inside an elective 14-day work period, not a daily hours cap. Do not compare with Japan or Singapore's maxDailyHours 8, which are ceilings.

Citation: Fair Labor Standards Act section 7(j), 29 U.S.C. 207(j); interpreted at 29 CFR 778.601

U.S. Government Publishing Office, govinfo (United States Code, 2024 edition)last read 6 August 2026

Hours and overtime limits

No federal limit on daily or weekly hours for workers 16 and over

No requirement

The FLSA sets no absolute limit on the number of hours an employee aged 16 or over may work in a day or a week. Apart from the child labor provisions and the regulations under them, an employee may work as many hours a week as the employee and employer see fit, so long as overtime compensation is paid for hours worked in excess of the maximum workweek prescribed by section 7(a). The Act does not generally require premium pay for hours in excess of eight per day, nor for work on Saturdays, Sundays, holidays or regular days of rest.

Who this covers

All employees aged 16 and over. Does not apply to minors under 16, who are separately capped by 29 CFR 570.35. Sector-specific federal hours-of-service limits exist outside the FLSAโ€ฆRead the full scope

All employees aged 16 and over. Does not apply to minors under 16, who are separately capped by 29 CFR 570.35. Sector-specific federal hours-of-service limits exist outside the FLSA, notably for commercial motor vehicle drivers under the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and for aviation and rail crews, and those are not displaced by this rule.

How to encode this in a schedule

No federal constraint to encode: a scheduler may lawfully assign a 16-hour shift, a 7-day week, or work on any holiday without violating federal law. Daily overtime, seventh-consecutive-day premiums and maximum-hours rules exist only in state law, so any such constraint in a U.S. schedule must be attached to a state, not to the federal layer.

The mistake employers make

Multi-state employers frequently build one national schedule template on the federal floor and then deploy it into states that impose daily overtime or day-of-rest rules. 29 CFR 778.102 says explicitly that nothing in the Act relieves an employer of an obligation assumed by contract, or of any obligation imposed by other Federal or State law, to limit overtime hours or to pay premium rates for work in excess of a daily standard. The federal floor is a floor, never a ceiling or a safe harbour.

Why this figure does not travel

maxDailyHours and maxWeeklyHours are null meaning NO RULE EXISTS, not 'unlimited by agreement'. Do not render a null here in the same column as a numeric cap from another jurisdiction without saying so.

Why this label and not another

Downgraded from 'hard' on adversarial review. 29 CFR 778.102 is binding regulation text and affirmatively states that no absolute hours limitation exists, but the rule records an absence. Labelling it 'hard' invites a consumer to encode a constraint where there is none.

Citation: 29 CFR 778.102 (Application of overtime provisions generally)

Electronic Code of Federal Regulations (eCFR), National Archives and Records Administrationlast read 6 August 2026

Hours and overtime limits

Overtime after 40 hours in a workweek at 1.5x

Binding law

No employer may employ a covered non-exempt employee for a workweek longer than forty hours unless the employee receives, for the hours worked in excess of forty, compensation at a rate not less than one and one-half times the regular rate at which the employee is employed.

Who this covers

Non-exempt employees who in any workweek are engaged in commerce or in the production of goods for commerce, or are employed in an enterprise so engaged. Excludes employees exempt underโ€ฆRead the full scope

Non-exempt employees who in any workweek are engaged in commerce or in the production of goods for commerce, or are employed in an enterprise so engaged. Excludes employees exempt under FLSA section 13, notably bona fide executive, administrative and professional employees, and excludes sectors with their own overtime schemes. The EAP exemption carries a salary test as well as a duties test: 29 CFR 541.600(a), as amended at 91 FR 27835 (15 May 2026), currently requires a salary of not less than $684 per week, with lower figures for the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands ($455) and American Samoa ($380) for employers other than the Federal Government, and an alternative hourly rate of $27.63 for computer employees. Do not assume a higher threshold; the 2024 increase was vacated and the regulation as it currently reads is $684.

How to encode this in a schedule

Soft cost constraint rather than a hard ceiling: the scheduler may assign any number of hours, but must price every hour beyond 40 in a single workweek at 1.5x. Because this is a pay rule and not a prohibition, an optimiser should treat 40 hours as a cost inflection point, not as a feasibility boundary.

Weekly overtime threshold hours
40
Overtime multiplier
1.5
EAP salary threshold USD per week
684

The mistake employers make

The threshold is 40 hours worked, not 40 hours scheduled or paid. Paid leave, holiday pay and other non-worked hours do not count toward the 40, so an employee paid for 48 hours in a week may have worked only 36 and be owed no overtime. Conversely, paid short breaks of 5 to 20 minutes are hours worked and do count.

Why this figure does not travel

weeklyOvertimeThresholdHours 40 is a PAY threshold, not a cap. It is not comparable with Japan's maxWeeklyHours 40 (a statutory ceiling breachable only under a filed Article 36 agreement), Singapore's maxWeeklyHours 44 (a hard cap for Part 4 employees only) or the UK's maxAverageWeeklyHours 48 (a 17-week rolling average). The United States has no weekly hours ceiling for adults.

Citation: Fair Labor Standards Act section 7(a)(1), 29 U.S.C. 207(a)(1); implemented at 29 CFR 778.101; exemption salary test at 29 CFR 541.600

U.S. Government Publishing Office, govinfo (United States Code, 2024 edition)last read 6 August 2026

Hours and overtime limits

Section 7(k) work period for fire protection and law enforcement

Binding law

A public agency may adopt a work period of at least 7 and not more than 28 consecutive days in place of the 7-day workweek. Overtime at not less than 1.5x is then owed only for hours exceeding the maximum hours standard for that work period: 212 hours over 28 days for fire protection employees and 171 hours over 28 days for law enforcement employees. For shorter work periods the threshold is the number of hours bearing the same ratio to 212 (or 171) as the number of days in the work period bears to 28, which 29 CFR 553.230(c) states as 7.57 hours per day for fire protection and 6.11 hours per day for law enforcement (both rounded), and tabulates rounded to the nearest whole hour down to 53 hours (fire) and 43 hours (law enforcement) for a 7-day work period.

Who this covers

Public agency employees engaged in fire protection or law enforcement activities, including security personnel in correctional institutions, employed on a work period basis. 29 CFR 553.202โ€ฆRead the full scope

Public agency employees engaged in fire protection or law enforcement activities, including security personnel in correctional institutions, employed on a work period basis. 29 CFR 553.202 expressly excludes any private organization engaged in furnishing fire protection or law enforcement services, even where the services are provided under contract with a public agency.

How to encode this in a schedule

Replaces the 40-hour weekly threshold with a per-work-period threshold. The scheduler must store the work period length per agency, compute the threshold by ratio to 28 days, and aggregate hours across the whole period rather than per week. Because the effective daily allowance is 7.57 hours for fire protection against 5.71 hours under a straight 40-hour week, long-cycle firehouse and patrol rotations carry materially less overtime under 7(k) than under section 7(a); which specific rotations an agency then adopts is an operational choice this file does not source.

Work period min days
7
Work period max days
28
Fire max hours per 28 days
212
Law enforcement max hours per 28 days
171
Fire max hours per 7 days
53
Law enforcement max hours per 7 days
43
Fire hours per day
7.57
Law enforcement hours per day
6.11
Overtime multiplier
1.5

The mistake employers make

Employers cite the 216-hour figure from the statute and underpay. The correction is more precise than 'the regulation supersedes the statute': 29 U.S.C. 207(k)(1) sets the threshold as the LESSER of (A) 216 hours or (B) the average number of hours determined by the Secretary under the 1974 amendments study. 212 and 171 are that clause (B) figure, so the regulation is operating the statute rather than overriding it, and 216 is only a ceiling that was never the live number. The other frequent error is applying 7(k) to privately employed guards or contract fire crews, which 29 CFR 553.202 forbids outright.

Citation: Fair Labor Standards Act section 7(k), 29 U.S.C. 207(k); maximum hours standards at 29 CFR 553.230; statutory history at 29 CFR 553.201(a); private-employer exclusion at 29 CFR 553.202

Electronic Code of Federal Regulations (eCFR), National Archives and Records Administrationlast read 6 August 2026

Rest between shifts

1 rule in United States (federal)

Rest between shifts

No federal minimum rest period between shifts

No requirement

The FLSA imposes no minimum interval between the end of one shift and the start of the next, and no restriction on quick returns or clopening. Because the Act contains no absolute limitation on hours worked apart from the child labor provisions, an employee aged 16 or over may lawfully finish at 23:00 and start again at 05:00 under federal law.

Who this covers

All employees aged 16 and over covered by the FLSA. Separate federal hours-of-service regimes outside the FLSA do impose off-duty minimums in specific transport sectors, notably commercial motor carriers, aviation and rail, and those are unaffected.

How to encode this in a schedule

No federal constraint to encode. Any minimum-rest or clopening rule in a U.S. schedule originates in state or municipal law, in a collective bargaining agreement, or in employer policy, and must be modelled at that level rather than as a national default.

The mistake employers make

Employers extrapolate from the European 11-hour daily rest rule, or from the transport hours-of-service rules they already comply with for drivers, and assume a comparable general federal minimum exists for all staff. It does not. Restrictions on clopening in the United States come from municipal fair workweek ordinances, not from federal law.

Why this figure does not travel

minRestHours null means no rule exists. Contrast the UK's 11 and Japan's null-with-an-effort-duty: all three render as 'no number', but only Japan carries a statutory duty to try.

Why this label and not another

Downgraded from 'hard' on adversarial review. Note also that this is the weakest-sourced entry in the file in a formal sense: no federal instrument states 'there is no minimum rest between shifts'. The claim is an inference from 29 CFR 778.102, which states there is no absolute limitation on the number of hours an employee may work, together with the absence of any rest-interval provision anywhere in the FLSA or 29 CFR. The inference is sound but it is an argument from absence, and it is labelled as such here rather than presented as a quoted rule.

Citation: Inferred from 29 CFR 778.102 (no absolute limitation on hours) together with the absence of any rest-interval provision in the FLSA and 29 CFR

Electronic Code of Federal Regulations (eCFR), National Archives and Records Administrationlast read 6 August 2026

Heat and outdoor work

3 rules in United States (federal)

Heat and outdoor work

General Duty Clause obligation to control recognized heat hazards

Binding law

Each employer shall furnish to each of his employees employment and a place of employment which are free from recognized hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm to his employees. OSHA uses this provision to cite heat hazards, but it specifies no temperature threshold, no rest schedule and no shade or water requirement.

Who this covers

Applies to indoor and outdoor work alike; the previous 'outdoor: true' flag contradicted this rule's own scope and has been cleared. Covers employers with employees under OSH Actโ€ฆRead the full scope

Applies to indoor and outdoor work alike; the previous 'outdoor: true' flag contradicted this rule's own scope and has been cleared. Covers employers with employees under OSH Act jurisdiction. It does not reach the self-employed, does not reach state and local government employees except in states with an OSHA-approved State Plan, and does not reach workplaces regulated under another federal agency's occupational safety authority. There is no federal heat standard, so heat is cited under the general duty provision. A number of State Plan states have adopted specific heat standards that impose concrete numeric duties the federal layer does not; those must be read from the relevant state jurisdiction rather than assumed from this federal entry.

How to encode this in a schedule

Binding but numerically empty, so it cannot be encoded as a threshold. It is best modelled as a requirement that a heat control plan exists and is applied when conditions warrant, with the actual triggers drawn from the applicable State Plan standard or from the employer's own policy. A scheduler should surface it as a duty to act rather than as a computable constraint.

Heat trigger basis:
none: the duty is outcome-based and states no threshold

The mistake employers make

Employers read the absence of a federal heat standard as the absence of a federal heat obligation. OSHA has issued General Duty Clause citations and Hazard Alert Letters for heat, and the revised National Emphasis Program builds its target industry list partly from that citation and hazard-alert-letter history. The clause is genuinely binding; it simply gives the employer no numbers to comply with.

Why this figure does not travel

Binding but numberless. Sits in the same family as uk-heat-outdoor-risk-assessment-duty and us-florida-heat-outdoor-osha-general-duty: a hard duty with no encodable trigger. Never render it in a column against California's 80F or Singapore's WBGT 32C as though the absence of a number meant the absence of a duty.

Citation: Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, section 5(a)(1), 29 U.S.C. 654(a)(1)

U.S. Government Publishing Office, govinfo (United States Code, 2024 edition)last read 6 August 2026

Heat and outdoor work

Heat National Emphasis Program inspection targeting at 80F heat index

Official guidance

OSHA's National Emphasis Program for outdoor and indoor heat-related hazards directs enforcement attention through two distinct triggers, which are easily conflated. First, programmed inspections drawn from the Appendix A target industry lists shall occur on any day that the National Weather Service has announced a heat warning or advisory for the local area. Second, a heat priority day occurs when the heat index for the day is expected to be 80 degrees Fahrenheit or more; on such days the Area Office will assess the potential for serious heat-related illnesses and injuries, and compliance officers conducting inspections opened for other purposes should inquire about the existence of any heat-related hazard prevention programs. Compliance officers investigating for other purposes must also expand or refer a heat inspection wherever there is evidence of violative conditions. Enforcement rests on the General Duty Clause, 29 U.S.C. 654.

Who this covers

The directive states that it applies OSHA-wide, covering general industry, construction, maritime and agriculture, in both indoor and outdoor settings; the previous 'outdoor: true' flag contradicted that and has been cleared. It directs OSHA's own inspectors; it creates no new duty on any employer.

How to encode this in a schedule

Not an employer obligation, so it must not be encoded as a schedule constraint. Its practical use is as a risk signal: on forecast days where the heat index reaches 80F, an employer in a targeted industry faces materially elevated inspection probability, and on days carrying an NWS heat warning or advisory it faces the programmed-inspection list directly. Treat it as a flag on the day, not a rule on the shift.

Heat trigger F
80
Heat trigger C
26.7
Targeted industry count
55
Targeted industries added
22
Targeted industries removed
46
Targeted industries retained
33
Duration years
5
Heat trigger basis:
heat index (National Weather Service)

The mistake employers make

The 80F heat index figure is widely quoted as though it were a regulatory threshold that obliges employers to provide breaks or shade. It is not. It is a trigger for OSHA attention. The second and subtler trap is assuming 80F is what puts an establishment on the programmed inspection list; that is driven by NWS heat warnings and advisories together with the Appendix A industry list. The revised directive also lists a revised inspection goal among its significant changes and states no numerical inspection quota, so the program is targeted by industry list rather than by inspection count.

Why this figure does not travel

heatTriggerF 80 triggers OSHA INSPECTION ATTENTION, not any employer duty. It is numerically identical to California's 80F shade trigger and to the proposed federal standard's initial trigger, and legally unrelated to both. This is the most dangerous number in the whole set to place in a comparison table.

Citation: OSHA Instruction CPL 03-00-024, National Emphasis Program, Outdoor and Indoor Heat-Related Hazards, 10 April 2026, sections VII (Expiration), XII.C (Inspection Scheduling), XII.D.1 and Appendix A

Occupational Safety and Health Administrationlast read 6 August 2026

In force from 10 April 2026

Heat and outdoor work

Proposed federal heat standard, not in effect

Official guidance

This is a proposed rule only and is not in force. As proposed, it would set an initial heat trigger at a heat index of 80F or a wet bulb globe temperature equal to the NIOSH Recommended Alert Limit, and a high heat trigger at a heat index of 90F or a WBGT equal to the NIOSH Recommended Exposure Limit. At or above the high heat trigger the employer would have to provide a minimum 15-minute paid rest break at least every two hours. For acclimatisation the employer would choose between two alternative protocols rather than being required to ramp: either applying the high-heat-trigger controls of paragraph (f) throughout the employee's first week whenever the heat index is at or above the initial heat trigger, or gradually restricting heat exposure to no more than 20 percent of a normal work shift on day one, 40 percent on day two, 60 percent on day three and 80 percent on day four. The same choice applies to employees returning after more than 14 days away, whose gradual option is 50 percent, then 60 percent, then 80 percent.

Who this covers

If finalised, would apply to all employers conducting outdoor and indoor work in general industry, construction, maritime and agriculture where OSHA has jurisdiction, as proposed 29 CFRโ€ฆRead the full scope

If finalised, would apply to all employers conducting outdoor and indoor work in general industry, construction, maritime and agriculture where OSHA has jurisdiction, as proposed 29 CFR 1910.148 with parallel amendments to parts 1915, 1917, 1918, 1926 and 1928. Proposed 1910.148(a)(2) would exclude work activities with no reasonable expectation of exposure at or above the initial heat trigger; short-duration exposures at or above that trigger of 15 minutes or less in any 60-minute period; organisations whose primary function is firefighting and specified emergency response activities; work in indoor areas or vehicles where air-conditioning consistently keeps the ambient temperature below 80F; and telework. As of the verification date it imposes no obligation on any employer.

How to encode this in a schedule

Must not be enforced as a constraint today. Worth modelling as a dormant rule set so that employers can see the shape of the coming obligation: a 15-minute paid break every 2 hours above a 90F heat index would materially change summer outdoor rosters, and the gradual acclimatisation option would cap a new hire's first-week shift lengths at a fraction of normal. Model the acclimatisation ramp as one branch of an employer election, not as a mandatory ramp. Keep the whole rule set disabled until and unless a final rule issues.

Heat trigger F
80
Heat trigger C
26.7
Heat trigger tier 2 F
90
Heat trigger tier 2 C
32.2
Break minutes
15
After hours
2
Short duration exclusion minutes per 60
15
Acclimatization is one of two options
yes
Acclimatization day 1 percent
20
Acclimatization day 2 percent
40
Acclimatization day 3 percent
60
Acclimatization day 4 percent
80
Returning worker day 1 percent
50
Returning worker day 2 percent
60
Returning worker day 3 percent
80
Returning worker absence days exceeding
14
Heat trigger basis:
heat index, or WBGT measured against the NIOSH Recommended Alert Limit (initial) and Recommended Exposure Limit (high heat)

The mistake employers make

Vendors and employers have begun citing the 80F and 90F triggers and the 15-minute break as current federal requirements. They are not. The only binding federal heat obligation remains the General Duty Clause. A second trap for anyone pre-building the rule set is treating the acclimatisation percentages as the standard's mandate; they are one of two protocols the employer may choose.

Why this figure does not travel

breakMinutes 15 / afterHours 2 is a PROPOSED cadence with no force. It sits in the same key shape as California's mandatory agricultural 10-minutes-every-2-hours and Singapore's 10-minutes-every-1-hour, and must be rendered as dormant wherever those are rendered as live.

Citation: Heat Injury and Illness Prevention in Outdoor and Indoor Work Settings, Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, 89 FR 70698 (30 August 2024), Docket No. OSHA-2021-0009, proposed 29 CFR 1910.148(a)(2), (e)(7) and (f)(2)

Occupational Safety and Health Administrationlast read 6 August 2026

Workers under 18

3 rules in United States (federal)

Workers under 18

Hours caps for minors aged 14 and 15

Binding law

Employment of 14- and 15-year-olds must be confined to periods outside school hours, and may not exceed 3 hours on any day when school is in session, including Fridays, 18 hours in any week when school is in session, 8 hours on any day when school is not in session, and 40 hours in any week when school is not in session.

Who this covers

Minors aged 14 and 15 in non-agricultural employment. Employees aged 16 and 17 have no FLSA hours limits whatsoever; they are restricted only by the hazardous occupation orders. Theโ€ฆRead the full scope

Minors aged 14 and 15 in non-agricultural employment. Employees aged 16 and 17 have no FLSA hours limits whatsoever; they are restricted only by the hazardous occupation orders. The exceptions at 29 CFR 570.35(c)(1) disapply the outside-school-hours rule, the 18-hour school week and the 3-hour school day (but not the 8-hour non-school day, the 40-hour non-school week or the curfew) for a minor who has graduated high school, has been lawfully excused from compulsory attendance after completing the eighth grade, has a child to support with attendance waived, is under a court order not to attend school, or has been permanently expelled. Separately, a minor enrolled in an approved school-supervised work-experience and career exploration program under 29 CFR 570.36 may work up to 23 hours in a school week and 3 hours on a school day, any portion of which may fall during school hours; 570.36 controls where it conflicts with 570.35.

How to encode this in a schedule

Hard constraint with a state-dependent switch: the scheduler must classify every date as school-in-session or not, using the local public school district where the minor resides while employed, then apply the matching daily and weekly caps. The week used for these caps is defined by 29 CFR 570.35(b) as a fixed and regularly recurring period of 168 hours identical to the workweek the employer established for the employee under 29 CFR 778.105, so the minor's cap window and the overtime window necessarily share a boundary.

Max daily hours school day
3
Max weekly hours school week
18
Max daily hours non school day
8
Max weekly hours non school week
40
Work experience max weekly hours school week
23
Work experience max daily hours school day
3

The mistake employers make

Two traps sit here. First, 570.35(b) defines a 'week when school is in session' as any week the local district is in session and students are required to attend for at least one day or partial day, so a 3-day holiday week is still an 18-hour week, not a 40-hour one. Second, the Friday rule catches employers out: a 14- or 15-year-old may work only 3 hours on a Friday during the school year, even though the weekend follows. Employers routinely schedule a 6-hour Friday evening shift on the assumption that Friday behaves like a Saturday.

Why this figure does not travel

The federal work-experience figures are the WECEP program under 29 CFR 570.36; California's equivalent under Labor Code 1391 is a different state programme with the same 23-hour figure. Same key, different programme.

Also touchesHours and overtime limits

Citation: 29 CFR 570.35(a)(1) through (a)(5), definitions at 570.35(b), exceptions at 570.35(c); work-experience program variation at 29 CFR 570.36(d)

Electronic Code of Federal Regulations (eCFR), National Archives and Records Administrationlast read 6 August 2026

Workers under 18

Daylight-only, occasional driving limit for 17-year-olds

Binding law

A 17-year-old may drive an automobile or truck on public roadways only if all nine conditions in 29 CFR 570.52(b) are met, including that the vehicle does not exceed 6,000 pounds gross vehicle weight and is fitted with restraints the employer has instructed the employee to use, that the driving is restricted to daylight hours, that the minor holds a valid state licence with no moving violations at the time of hire and has completed a state-approved driver education course, that the driving takes place within a 30-mile radius of the minor's place of employment, that it involves no more than two trips away from the primary place of employment in any single day for delivering the employer's goods to a customer and no more than two such trips for transporting passengers other than the employer's own employees, that no more than three passengers including the employer's employees are carried at any one time, and that the driving is only occasional and incidental. 29 CFR 570.52(c)(5) defines occasional and incidental as no more than one-third of the employee's worktime in any workday and no more than 20 percent of the employee's worktime in any workweek.

Who this covers

17-year-olds only. 29 CFR 570.52(a) declares motor-vehicle driver and outside helper to be particularly hazardous occupations for minors between 16 and 18, and 29 CFR 570.33(f) separatelyโ€ฆRead the full scope

17-year-olds only. 29 CFR 570.52(a) declares motor-vehicle driver and outside helper to be particularly hazardous occupations for minors between 16 and 18, and 29 CFR 570.33(f) separately prohibits the operation of motor vehicles by 14- and 15-year-olds, so employed driving on public roads is unavailable below 17 and outside-helper work is unavailable below 18. The exemption is unavailable for any driving that involves towing, route deliveries or route sales, transport for hire of property, goods or passengers, or urgent time-sensitive deliveries such as pizza and prepared food delivery.

How to encode this in a schedule

Hard constraint combining a time-of-day window with a duty-mix budget. The scheduler must cap driving at one-third of that employee's worktime in the day and 20 percent across the workweek, so driving minutes have to be tracked as a proportion of assigned hours, not merely as a permitted task type. Both proportions are of worktime, so shortening the shift shrinks the driving budget with it. Any driving must additionally sit within daylight hours; see daylightHoursNote for the limits of what the regulation actually specifies.

Min age
17
Max vehicle weight pounds
6,000
Max radius miles
30
Max delivery trips per day
2
Max passenger trips per day
2
Max passengers
3
Max share of workday
0.333
Max share of workday exact
1/3
Max share of workweek
0.2

The mistake employers make

Restaurants assume a 17-year-old with a licence can take delivery shifts. Delivery of pizzas and prepared food to the customer is named in 29 CFR 570.52(c)(6) as an example of an urgent, time-sensitive delivery, and 570.52(b)(5) bans such deliveries outright, whatever the hour. The daylight limit also bites hardest in winter, when an after-school shift starting at 15:30 may have almost no lawful driving window left, but note that the regulation supplies no definition of daylight and the precision of any implementation is the implementer's own.

Also touchesNight workHours and overtime limits

Citation: 29 CFR 570.52(b) and definitions at 570.52(c), Hazardous Occupations Order 2; under-16 prohibition at 29 CFR 570.33(f)

Electronic Code of Federal Regulations (eCFR), National Archives and Records Administrationlast read 6 August 2026

Workers under 18

Evening and morning curfew for minors aged 14 and 15

Binding law

Employment of 14- and 15-year-olds must be confined to the hours between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. in any one day, except during the summer, defined in the regulation as June 1 through Labor Day, when the evening hour will be 9 p.m.

Who this covers

Minors aged 14 and 15 in non-agricultural employment. No federal night-work restriction of any kind applies to employees aged 16 and over. IMPORTANT: the exceptions at 29 CFR 570.35(c)(1)โ€ฆRead the full scope

Minors aged 14 and 15 in non-agricultural employment. No federal night-work restriction of any kind applies to employees aged 16 and over. IMPORTANT: the exceptions at 29 CFR 570.35(c)(1) for minors who have graduated high school, been lawfully excused from compulsory attendance, have a child to support, are under a court order not to attend school, or have been permanently expelled DO NOT lift this curfew. By its terms 570.35(c)(1) excepts only paragraphs (a)(1), (a)(3) and (a)(5), which are the outside-school-hours rule, the 18-hour school week and the 3-hour school day. The curfew at (a)(6) is waived only by the sports-attendant exception at 570.35(c)(2), which disapplies paragraphs (a)(2) through (a)(6) for minors performing sports-attending services at professional sporting events.

How to encode this in a schedule

Hard constraint: for any employee under 16, every assignment block must fall entirely within 07:00 to 19:00, widening to 07:00 to 21:00 for dates between 1 June and Labor Day inclusive. The summer window is date-dependent rather than fixed, so the scheduler must resolve Labor Day, the first Monday in September, per year rather than hard-coding a date.

Earliest start time
07:00
Latest end time
19:00
Latest end time summer
21:00
Summer start date
06-01
Summer end event
Labor Day

The mistake employers make

The curfew widens on 1 June regardless of whether the local school year has ended, and snaps back to 7 p.m. on the day after Labor Day regardless of whether school has resumed. Employers commonly tie the 9 p.m. window to their own school calendar and run late shifts into September in breach. A second trap is assuming that a 15-year-old who has graduated or been excused from school is freed from the curfew; that exception reaches only the school-hours and school-week caps. Many states impose tighter curfews than the federal one, and the stricter rule governs.

Also touchesNight work

Citation: 29 CFR 570.35(a)(6); exceptions at 570.35(c)(1) and (c)(2)

Electronic Code of Federal Regulations (eCFR), National Archives and Records Administrationlast read 6 August 2026

What a scheduler encodes from the federal layer

Three things, and none of them is a break. First, a workweek definition per site: a fixed start day and hour that does not move, because the overtime calculation happens inside it and nowhere else. Second, a paid or unpaid flag on every non-working interval, keyed to its length and to whether any duty survives during it, since that flag decides whether the interval counts toward forty. Third, an exception path for the sector work periods, because a hospital on an 8/80 agreement and a fire department on a section 7(k) period compute overtime against a calendar the rest of the payroll does not use.

Then hand the rest of the model downward. Break rules, daily caps, turnaround, curfews beyond the federal minors window, heat thresholds and advance notice all arrive from state and city law. A product that ships one United States ruleset is wrong in both directions at once: too strict for the states that legislate nothing, and far too loose for the ones that legislate hard.

One federal rule is worth encoding as a warning rather than a constraint. On duty of twenty-four hours or more, a sleeping period may be excluded from hours worked by agreement, but Wage and Hour enforcement policy voids the entire exclusion if the employee cannot get at least five hours of sleep. That is an interruption count, not a shift length, so it only becomes visible once the schedule meets reality.

What we looked for in the federal layer and did not publish

The federal file was searched for the rules people expect to find in it. These are the ones that genuinely are not there, and the ones that exist but belong to a different regulator entirely.

Predictive scheduling

Predictive scheduling

No federal predictive scheduling or fair workweek law exists. Advance-notice, predictability-pay and clopening rules in the United States exist only at state and municipal level. Bills of the Schedules That Work Act type have been introduced repeatedly without enactment, but the specific bill numbers previously recorded here have been removed because congress.gov is outside this file's permitted primary-source set and dol.gov was unreachable during verification, so they could not be confirmed. The absence itself is what matters and is not disputed.

Rest and meal breaks

Rest and meal breaks

No federal meal or rest break entitlement exists to state as a positive rule. The absence is captured in us-federal-rest-breaks-no-federal-entitlement, now typed 'none' rather than 'hard', instead of being invented as a requirement. Any specific break duration or trigger threshold a user expects to find here belongs to a state jurisdiction.

Night work

Night work

No federal restriction on night work, and no federal night-shift premium, exists for employees aged 16 and over. 29 CFR 778.102 confirms the Act does not require premium pay for work outside the normal workday. Only the under-16 curfew at 29 CFR 570.35(a)(6) is stated. Night-work health assessments and shift-length limits comparable to the EU Working Time Directive have no federal U.S. counterpart.

Hours and overtime limits

Hours and overtime limits

Sector-specific federal hours-of-service limits outside the FLSA, notably the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration driving and on-duty limits for commercial motor vehicle drivers, and the FAA and Federal Railroad Administration crew duty rules, are real hard scheduling constraints but sit outside the DOL and OSHA scope of this jurisdiction file and are administered by the Department of Transportation. They should be modelled as separate sector jurisdictions rather than folded into the federal labor law layer. Specific FMCSA hour figures previously recorded in this note have been removed, since 49 CFR was not read during this verification pass.

Workers under 18

Workers under 18

The Hazardous Occupations Orders at 29 CFR 570.51 through 570.68 restrict which tasks minors under 18 may perform, but with the single exception of the 17-year-old driving order at 570.52 they impose no hours, timing or shift-structure constraint. They govern task eligibility, not schedule shape, and are therefore excluded. The count of orders previously stated here has been dropped as it was not verified. Agricultural child labor standards under 29 CFR 570 subpart E-1 are also excluded as a separate regime.

Heat and outdoor work

Heat and outdoor work

No numeric federal heat threshold is binding on employers. NIOSH Recommended Alert and Exposure Limits are referenced by the proposed rule but are advisory recommendations from a research institute, not enforceable limits, and their WBGT values vary with workload and are therefore not stateable as a single figure. State Plan heat standards in several states contain the concrete numbers but belong to state jurisdiction files and were not verified against primary sources here.

Comparisons this page cannot support

These caveats bear on United States (federal) but belong to topics with no rule here, usually because the finding for that topic is that nothing exists. This reference never builds a column that ranks jurisdictions on a single number, because a hard ceiling, an averaged limit with an opt-out and a pay threshold are not the same quantity.

States covered so far

A state gets a page when it has something specific to say. These two were built first because they disagree with each other about almost everything, which makes the pair more useful than either alone. Other states are added by search demand rather than by alphabet.

California

California Department of Industrial Relations (wage and hour rules enforced by the Division of Labor Standardsโ€ฆ

California is famous as the most protective wage-and-hour state in the country, yet it sets no maximum daily hours for adults and no general minimum rest between shifts.

17 binding rules
See the rules

Florida

Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation (Fla. Stat. 450.012(4) defines 'department' as DBPRโ€ฆ

Most states with no break law simply never passed one.

9 binding rules1 official guidance5 checked absences
See the rules

Scope and limits

Every figure on this page was read from the primary source linked on its rule, most recently on 6 August 2026. The methodology sets out how sources were chosen, what a checked absence means, and what happens when a rule goes stale.

Keep reading

Every jurisdiction in this reference →Heat and outdoor work across all six jurisdictions →How many people one continuously staffed post needs →Rotation patterns and the shapes that fit →

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