I’m on a salary. They’ve had me working six days a week, close to sixty hours, for almost a month now. Is there a legal limit on how many hours they can make me work?

The Department of Labor’s Fact Sheet #23 covers the overtime requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Its first paragraph under the heading “Requirements” reads:

Three things sit in that paragraph. The hours themselves are not capped by the Act for employees aged 16 and older. Weekend, holiday and rest-day work does not, by itself, require extra pay. And the premium-pay sentence — the one about hours over the weekly figure — opens with a condition, “Unless specifically exempted,” which is the whole reason the hours question and the pay question come apart.

This page describes the general federal rule and cannot say which of those conditions fits any particular job.

The second paragraph of the same section sets out the unit the Act measures in:

Two things there matter to anyone keeping their own notes. A heavy week and a quiet week do not cancel each other out, because the fact sheet says averaging across weeks is not permitted — as a general rule, each week stands on its own. (The Act has a few special measuring periods for particular kinds of employer; one is noted under what this page cannot tell a reader.)

And the workweek an employer uses need not run Monday to Sunday, so setting a month of hours against a schedule means knowing which seven days that employer treats as the week.

The answer to the hours question is short, and the question next to it is the longer one: whether a salaried job is exempt in the first place. That is not where this page settles it. An earlier answer here sets out what the Department of Labor says about it, and the Wage and Hour Division applies it to a real job: 1-866-487-9243.

This answer is federal. Whether the state the work is done in adds anything of its own is a separate question, and a state labor department is the place to ask — “depends on your state” is part of the honest answer here.

Three things. First, the hours actually worked each day, with the time started and the time finished, plus anything done before or after those times. Keep it grouped week by week, because the week is the unit the fact sheet describes.

Second, which seven days the employer treats as the workweek, and what the offer letter, contract or schedule says the normal hours are.

Third, for each paycheck, the pay period it covered and what was paid for that period — so the record lines up period by period rather than as one running total.

For some employers there is. Fact Sheet #54, on the health care industry, says:

Four things. It gives the general federal rule only, and cannot say whether any particular job is exempt — which is what the extra-pay question turns on.

The quoted sentence names an age: 16. Whether different rules apply below it is not something this page covers, and the Wage and Hour Division handles those.

Hospitals and residential care establishments may, under an agreement or understanding reached with employees before the work is done, use a fixed fourteen-day period instead of the workweek (Department of Labor Fact Sheet #54, section 7(j) of the Act). This page does not cover that arrangement.

And this answer is about the Fair Labor Standards Act and nothing else. Whether some other rule reaches a particular job or industry is a separate question this page does not reach.