Maryland Overtime Pay Calculator

Maryland's overtime rules are set by the Maryland Wage and Hour Law (Md. Code, Labor & Employment §3-415), which generally mirrors the federal 40-hour workweek standard: 1.5 times the regular rate for hours worked beyond 40. Maryland does not require daily overtime, so a single long shift doesn't trigger overtime pay by itself as long as the weekly total stays at or under 40 hours.

One place Maryland actually diverges from federal law is agricultural work: instead of a blanket exemption, Maryland requires overtime for agricultural employees once they exceed 60 hours in a workweek, a specific state carve-out that gives farmworkers more protection than the federal exemption alone provides. This is a meaningful difference from states like Iowa or Kansas, where most agricultural workers get no overtime protection at all.

Maryland's $15.00/hr minimum wage for 2026 makes the standard overtime rate $22.50/hr for minimum-wage earners. Employers in Maryland must also track and pay overtime for salaried non-exempt employees by converting the weekly salary into an hourly regular rate, and local jurisdictions like Montgomery County and Howard County have their own higher local minimum wages that must be used as the base rate for those workers' overtime calculations.

The Maryland Department of Labor's Employment Standards Service investigates unpaid overtime and wage complaints under the Wage and Hour Law and the separate Maryland Wage Payment and Collection Law. Workers can file directly with the department, and Maryland law also allows a private lawsuit that can recover up to three times the unpaid wages as damages if the employer's nonpayment wasn't made in good faith, plus attorney's fees.

Maryland's statute of limitations for wage claims, including overtime, is three years — longer than the federal FLSA's standard two-year window (three years only if willful). This makes filing under Maryland state law often more advantageous than relying on the federal claim alone, particularly for workers whose unpaid overtime stretches back multiple years.

A common Maryland-specific trap is employers applying the federal agricultural exemption wholesale, when Maryland actually requires overtime for farmworkers once they cross 60 hours weekly — many agricultural employers wrongly assume no overtime is ever owed. Workers in farming, nurseries, and related agricultural jobs in Maryland should track hours carefully, since 60 hours is a real trigger point under state law even though there's no federal equivalent.

Local minimum wage differences also create confusion: Montgomery County and Howard County both mandate minimum wages above the state's $15.00/hr floor, and overtime for workers in those counties must be calculated using the higher local rate, not the statewide minimum. Tipped employees can be paid a reduced direct wage of $3.63/hr as long as tips bring total pay to the full minimum wage, but overtime must always be based on the full applicable minimum wage, not the tipped cash wage.