Alaska Overtime Pay Calculator

Alaska is one of the small handful of states that requires overtime based on the day, not just the week. Under the Alaska Wage and Hour Act (AS 23.10.060), most non-exempt employees earn 1.5 times their regular rate for any hours worked beyond 8 in a single day, in addition to the standard 40-hour weekly threshold. Whichever calculation produces more overtime pay for that day generally controls, so an employee working four 10-hour days would already owe 8 hours of daily overtime even though the weekly total is only 40.

This daily trigger matters enormously in Alaska's seasonal industries — commercial fishing processing, oil field services, tourism, and construction — where compressed schedules and long single shifts are common. A worker doing a 12-hour shift on a fishing tender or at a remote job site accrues 4 hours of overtime that day regardless of how the rest of the week shakes out, which is very different from how most of the country calculates pay.

The 2026 state minimum wage of $11.91/hour sets the floor, making the minimum overtime rate $17.87/hour, but Alaska's cost of living and remote work premiums mean many workers earn substantially more, and the 1.5x multiplier applies to that actual regular rate.

Alaska law exempts employers with fewer than four employees from the daily and weekly overtime requirements altogether, a carve-out that catches many small businesses, family-run lodges, and remote village operations off guard on both sides — some small employers wrongly believe they're exempt when they've grown past the threshold, and some workers assume they're covered when their employer legitimately isn't.

Alaska also does not allow a tip credit against its state minimum wage the way federal law and many other states do; tipped employees must be paid the full state minimum wage before tips, and overtime is calculated on that full rate. Commercial fishing crew members working aboard vessels face their own separate federal exemption structure, and drivers covered by the Motor Carrier Act exemption may also fall outside daily overtime rules — these industry-specific carve-outs are worth double-checking against your specific job.

The Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development, Wage and Hour Administration, investigates unpaid overtime complaints and can order back pay. Workers may also sue directly in state court. Alaska generally follows a 2-year lookback for unpaid wage claims, extending to 3 years where the violation is willful, mirroring the federal FLSA structure, though claims combining state and federal violations should be evaluated carefully since remedies can differ.

Because daily overtime is so easy for payroll software configured for the rest of the country to miss, workers who suspect a problem should keep their own daily time logs — start time, end time, and any unpaid breaks — since employer records in Alaska sometimes only track weekly totals and miss the daily 8-hour trigger entirely.