Saskatchewan Overtime Pay Calculator

The greater-of rule, stated in the statute

Unlike Manitoba, where the rule has to be inferred from a fact sheet, Saskatchewan puts it in the legislation. Section 2-17(2)(d) of The Saskatchewan Employment Act requires an employer, when calculating overtime pay, to:

The third row is the instructive one: daily gives 2, weekly gives 6, and the answer is 6 — not 8.

The 4×10 rule — your daily threshold may be 10, not 8

Saskatchewan is the only province where the employer can move your daily overtime threshold unilaterally, with no permit and no agreement. Section 2-18(2) lets an employer schedule either:

• eight hours a day for no more than five days in a week — daily overtime starts at 8, or
• 10 hours a day for no more than four days in a week — daily overtime starts at 10

So a compressed four-day schedule in Saskatchewan is not an averaging arrangement requiring your consent. It is a scheduling choice the employer may simply make, and it lawfully removes daily overtime for hours 8 to 10.

The calculator above models the standard 5×8 schedule. If your employer has scheduled you four 10-hour days and you regularly work 30 hours a week or more, use 10 as your daily threshold.

A week with a public holiday has a 32-hour threshold

This is a rule with no equivalent in most provinces and it works in workers' favour. Section 2-17(2)(c) requires an employer to "reduce the time when overtime is payable by eight hours for each public holiday occurring in a week."

So a week containing one public holiday has a 32-hour weekly overtime threshold, and a week containing two has 24. Separately, s. 2-17(2)(b) excludes from the weekly count any hours you actually worked on the holiday — those are paid as public holiday pay instead.

Meal breaks are also excluded from the overtime calculation where notice was given under s. 2-11 and you are not at the employer's disposal during them.

Banking overtime — twelve months, the longest in the west

Banked time requires a written agreement signed by both parties. Hours are banked at 1.5 times the overtime worked, and must be taken within 12 months after the end of the pay period in which they were banked — four times Manitoba's three-month window.

If the time is not taken, the employer must pay out the banked hours at your hourly wage (the 1.5 already being inside the banked figure). Banked time is deemed wages owing for recovery purposes, and time taken counts as regular hours.

Either party can unwind the arrangement on written notice of at least one pay period, with payout by the end of the following pay period. Two anti-abuse rules are worth knowing: on layoff or termination your employer cannot force banked hours to be used as your notice period, and the payout is not pay in lieu of notice.

Who is exempt from overtime in Saskatchewan

Employees performing services entirely of a managerial character are exempt. Note the word — Saskatchewan's test is stricter than Manitoba's "primarily" and considerably stricter than a job title.

Also exempt from the overtime provisions: licensed or registered professionals who may practise without another profession's supervision, and students in training including medical interns; commission-only travelling salespersons covering towns at least 20 km apart; logging industry employees, excluding office, saw mill and planing mill roles; care providers other than live-in; outfitters; mineral exploration north of Township 62; motor vehicle salespersons; rural municipality road construction and maintenance staff; teachers; firefighters in cities of 10,000 or more; and election officials.

Part II does not apply at all to undertakings employing only the employer's immediate family, to sitters, or to athletes. Farm workers are outside Part II under s. 2-3(1)(a) — but s. 2-3(2) deems egg hatcheries, greenhouses and nurseries, bush clearing operations and commercial hog operations NOT to be farming, so workers there do get overtime.

Industries with different thresholds

Each of these subtracts eight hours from the period threshold for every public holiday, as the general rule does. The oil truck driver scheme is unusual: hours over 40 in a week accumulate, weeks under 40 cancel accumulated hours one for one, and the balance is paid at 1.5× each 1 July and on termination.

Modified work arrangements are also available: by written agreement signed a week in advance, hours may be averaged over up to four weeks — 40, 80, 120 or 160 hours — with a daily cap of 12 hours. Since 1 January 2026 part-time employees may participate, which they previously could not.

If you are owed unpaid overtime in Saskatchewan

Both the filing deadline and the recovery window are 12 months, but they are independent tests measured from different events:

• Filing. Section 2-89(1): within 12 months after the last day on which the wages should have been paid, or after the last day for any final payment if your employment has ended.
• Recovery. Section 2-89(2): limited to wages that became payable in the 12 months preceding the day the claim was made — or the last 12 months of employment, if it has ended.

Because the recovery window runs backward from your claim date, waiting eleven months to file means you recover eleven months, not twelve. Delay costs you directly.

Complaints about non-wage contraventions run 12 months from when you knew, or ought reasonably to have known, about them.