You worked 48 hours last week. Your paycheck shows 40, plus a note from the manager about how the extra time “evens out” eventually. Or your hours are all there, but the eight overtime hours were paid at your straight rate instead of time-and-a-half. Both versions are among the most common wage violations in the country — and both have a fix that doesn’t require hiring a lawyer or quitting your job.

Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, covered non-exempt workers must be paid at least one and a half times their regular rate for every hour past 40 in a workweek. When that doesn’t happen, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division exists to get the money back — and filing a complaint is free, confidential, and open to you regardless of your immigration status. Here’s how to do it in a way that actually sticks.

First, make sure it’s really overtime the law covers

The federal overtime rule is weekly, not daily: working a 12-hour Tuesday doesn’t trigger federal overtime if your week still totals 40 or less (some states, like California, add daily rules on top). The rule also applies only to non-exempt workers — most hourly employees qualify, while genuinely salaried executive, administrative, and professional employees may not. Two traps to know: a salary alone doesn’t make you exempt (the duties matter, and misclassifying hourly-type work as “salaried management” is a classic violation), and “off the clock” work counts — setup before a shift, answering work texts at night, working through an auto-deducted lunch. If the employer knew or should have known you were working, those hours belong in the total.

Also common: paying straight time for overtime hours, paying cash for extras at base rate, or averaging two weeks together (a 50-hour week followed by a 30-hour week is 10 hours of overtime, not zero).

Build your file before you file

Claims stick when they’re specific. The Wage and Hour Division lists exactly what it needs: your name and contact information, the employer’s name, address, and phone number, the kind of work you did, how you were paid and when, and — the gold — whatever records you have. Pay stubs. Schedules. Time-clock punches. Your own notes of hours worked, even handwritten in a pocket notebook, carry real weight in these investigations, especially when the employer’s records are missing or doctored.

Start that log today if you haven’t: date, start time, end time, breaks, and what you were paid. Keep copies at home, not on a work computer. You don’t need a perfect paper trail to file — investigators can reconstruct hours from coworker interviews and employer records — but every document you bring shortens the road.

How to actually file — and what happens next

You can file with the Wage and Hour Division by calling 1-866-487-9243 or by reaching the agency online through its complaint page, which explains the process and connects you to your local office. There is no fee. Complaints are confidential: the agency does not disclose your name, the nature of the complaint, or even the fact that a complaint exists, except when necessary and generally with your permission for revealing your identity.

If the division investigates, an investigator examines the employer’s pay records — often for all workers, not just you — interviews employees, and determines whether back wages are owed. If they are, the investigator requests payment, and most employers pay; the department can litigate when they don’t. In many cases workers recover not just the unpaid overtime but an equal amount in liquidated damages, doubling the recovery.

One quiet, useful footnote: the department periodically recovers wages for workers it can’t locate. Its Workers Owed Wages search tool lets you check whether money has already been collected in your name from a past employer. It takes two minutes and costs nothing.

Mind the clock: the two-year limit

Federal wage claims run on a statute of limitations: generally two years from the violation, extended to three years when the violation was willful. Every payday that shortchanges you starts its own clock, so old weeks are expiring while you wait. If your unpaid overtime stretches back a while, filing sooner literally preserves money that waiting would erase.

You also have a second path: your state labor department. Many states enforce their own wage laws with longer deadlines, higher minimum rates, daily overtime, or stronger penalties, and worker-facing guidance at Worker.gov can help you sort out which route fits. You can generally pursue the stronger of the two — ask both agencies rather than guessing.

Retaliation is illegal — and it’s a separate violation

The fear that keeps most people from filing is getting fired, demoted, or having hours cut. Know this: the FLSA prohibits employers from retaliating against workers for filing a complaint or cooperating with an investigation, and retaliation is a separate violation the department pursues on its own — even if the underlying overtime claim doesn’t pan out. If anything changes about your job after you file, document it immediately and tell the investigator.

The bottom line is simpler than the fear: time-and-a-half after 40 is not a perk your employer extends when business is good. It’s a federal floor, it’s been the law since 1938, and the agency that enforces it works for you, not your boss. Gather the stubs, write down the hours, and make the call.

This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by a human editor. Figures are linked to their primary sources; where a claim could not be verified from the public record, we say so.