Ontario Overtime Pay Calculator

How overtime is calculated in Ontario

Ontario has the simplest overtime rule of any large province, and the simplicity is the thing to understand. Section 22(1) of the Employment Standards Act, 2000 requires an employer to pay "…overtime pay of at least one and one-half times his or her regular rate for each hour of work in excess of 44 hours in each work week or, if another threshold is prescribed, that prescribed threshold." One threshold, applied to the week — with the prescribed exceptions set out below.

This is a genuine difference from the provinces on either side. The same 53-hour week that pays $1,487.50 in British Columbia pays $1,437.50 in Ontario, because BC charges the employer for long days and Ontario only charges for long weeks.

What counts as your "regular rate"

If you are paid hourly, your regular rate is simply your hourly wage. If you are paid any other way, the ESA defines it in s. 1(1) as the amount earned in a given work week divided by the number of non-overtime hours actually worked in that week. That divisor is worth reading twice: it is not a fixed 44.

For most employees on the standard threshold the divisor does work out to 44, which is why every government example uses that figure. But an employee on one of the modified thresholds below — a local cartage driver at 50 hours, say — divides by 50, not 44.

Fixed salary

Fluctuating salary — a genuinely different calculation

If your salary is set against a specific number of regular hours and is adjusted when those hours vary, the divisor is your regular work week, not 44. Conflating this with the fixed-salary method produces the wrong answer, and it is one of the most common payroll errors in the province.

Commission and piece rate

Total earnings for the week are divided by non-overtime hours worked. An employee earning $900 across 48 hours has a regular rate of $900 ÷ 44 = $20.45, an overtime rate of $30.68, and is owed $122.72 for the 4 overtime hours, on top of the $900. Commission and piece-rate employees must also receive at least minimum wage for every hour worked.

Where the employer's records specify when commission was earned on a daily basis, a more favourable method applies: only the commission earned during the first 44 hours forms the regular rate, which usually produces a higher overtime rate.

If you work at two or more different rates for the same employer, s. 22(1.1) matters: the 44-hour threshold is reached on your total hours, but each overtime hour is paid at 1.5× the rate applicable to the work performed in that hour — not a blended average.

Public holidays interact with overtime — asymmetrically

This trips up a lot of calculations. Where you receive premium pay for hours worked on a public holiday, those hours are excluded from the overtime calculation for that week. Work 54 hours including 9 on a public holiday paid at premium, and your overtime is calculated on 45 hours, not 54 — so 1 overtime hour, not 10.

Where you instead took a substitute day off, the holiday hours do count toward the threshold. Work 50 hours with a substitute day arrangement and you are owed 6 overtime hours in the ordinary way. The rule is ESA s. 31, "Premium pay hours not overtime hours."

Averaging agreements and banked time

Under s. 22(2), you and your employer may agree to average your hours over up to four weeks for the purpose of determining overtime. The periods must be separate, non-overlapping and contiguous, of two or more consecutive weeks each. The agreement must state a start date and an expiry date; for non-unionized employees the expiry cannot be more than two years after the start. Once made, it cannot be revoked before expiry unless both parties agree.

Instead of overtime pay, s. 22(7) allows 1.5 hours of paid time off for each hour of overtime worked, if you and your employer agree. That time must be taken within three months of the work week in which it was earned, or within 12 months if you agree to the longer window. If your employment ends before the time is taken, the employer must pay it out as overtime pay.

Note that Ontario's banked-time ratio is 1.5 hours off per overtime hour — the same value as the pay premium. Alberta, by contrast, banks hour for hour, which makes banking a materially worse deal there.

Who does not get overtime in Ontario

Exempt from overtime specifically (O. Reg. 285/01, s. 8)

• A person whose work is supervisory or managerial in character, who performs non-supervisory tasks only "on an irregular or exceptional basis"
• Information technology professionals — an employee “primarily engaged in the investigation, analysis, design, development, implementation, operation or management of information systems based on computer and related technologies through the objective application of specialized knowledge and professional judgment.” That is word for word Alberta’s definition, and it is broader than British Columbia’s, which carves out basic operational technical support. It captures a large share of Ontario software and IT roles.
• Firefighters
• Taxi cab drivers
• Ambulance drivers, drivers' helpers and first-aid attendants on an ambulance
• Superintendents, janitors and caretakers of a residential building who reside in the building
• Hunting, fishing and wilderness guides
• Landscape gardeners, and swimming pool installation and maintenance
• Work directly related to growing mushrooms, flowers, sod, trees and shrubs for sale, and breeding or boarding horses on a farm
• Students instructing or supervising children, students at children's camps, and students in a registered charity's recreational program

The managerial exemption in s. 8(b) carries the same warning as everywhere else: the qualifier "on an irregular or exceptional basis" is doing real work in that sentence. A working supervisor who regularly performs the same duties as their reports is not obviously covered by it.

Section 22(9) adds a useful rule where your week mixes exempt and covered work — often called the 50 per cent rule. Part VIII applies to all your hours that week unless the covered work took up less than half the time you spent fulfilling your duties.

Exempt from most of the Act (O. Reg. 285/01, s. 2(1))

A broader exemption, also removing minimum wage, public holidays and vacation, covers qualified practitioners of architecture, law, professional engineering, public accounting, surveying and veterinary science; registered practitioners of chiropody, chiropractic, dentistry, massage therapy, medicine, optometry, pharmacy, physiotherapy, psychology and naturopathy; teachers; students training for those occupations; commercial fishing; real estate salespersons and brokers; and commission salespeople, other than route salespeople, whose sales are normally made away from the employer's place of business.

Different threshold, not exempt

Some industries keep their overtime entitlement but at a higher threshold. These are not exemptions — you are still owed 1.5×, just later:

The two road-building rows carry a wrinkle worth knowing: under s. 13(1)(b) and 13(2)(b), hours not worked below the threshold in one week — up to 22 hours — carry forward and raise the following week's threshold. A quiet week can therefore push the next week's overtime start well past 55 hours.

Homemakers paid under s. 11(3) and residential care workers under O. Reg. 285/01 s. 23 receive no overtime at all.

Ontario minimum wage and the overtime floor

The general minimum wage is $17.60 an hour, and rises to $17.95 on October 1, 2026. Rates are indexed to inflation, published on or before April 1, and take effect each October 1.

Section 23(4)(b) sets a floor that operates independently of your regular rate: overtime pay divided by the hours that attracted it must be at least 1.5 × minimum wage. That is $26.40 an hour today, rising to $26.93 on October 1, 2026. It matters most for commission and piece-rate employees, whose calculated regular rate can otherwise fall below the line.

If you are owed unpaid overtime in Ontario

Ontario gives workers the longest window of the three provinces, and it is the only one where the filing deadline and the recovery period are the same length.

• Filing deadline. Section 96(3) provides that a complaint about a contravention that occurred more than two years before the day the complaint was filed "shall be deemed not to have been filed." This is absolute — there is no discretion to extend it, unlike in BC.
• Recovery window. Section 111(1) prevents an employment standards officer from ordering wages that became due more than two years before the complaint was filed.

Your employment status makes no difference. Section 96(1) covers anyone alleging the Act "has been or is being contravened," and the clock runs from the contravention regardless of whether you have left.

The old six-month filing deadline and the $10,000 recovery cap were repealed effective February 20, 2015. Any guidance still citing those figures is a decade out of date.