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Brazil Overtime Rules: The 44-Hour Week, the 50% Premium, and the 40-Hour Week Arriving in December (2026)

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Brazil Overtime Rules: The 44-Hour Week, the 50% Premium, and the 40-Hour Week Arriving in December (2026)

The short answer: Brazil's Consolidation of Labor Laws, the CLT, sets the normal working day at 8 hours and the normal week at 44 hours. Every hour past either line is overtime, paid at a minimum 50% premium, and the law allows at most 2 overtime hours a day. Work on a Sunday or a public holiday is paid double unless the employer gives a replacement day off. Work between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. earns a 20% night premium, and each night hour counts as only 52 minutes and 30 seconds. Every employer with more than 20 employees must record each worker's hours. And the 44-hour line is about to move: Constitutional Amendment 141, promulgated on 16 October 2026, cuts the normal week to 42 hours on 16 December 2026 and to 40 hours on 16 December 2027, guarantees two paid rest days a week, and forbids any pay cut to go with it. Punch keeps the record all of those rules are measured against.

Readers of our Mexico guide will recognize the shape: a long-standing weekly limit, a constitutional reform that shortens it in steps, and a hard rule that pay does not fall with the hours. Brazil's version lands sooner. The first step is six weeks away. Here is how the rules work for a small crew, and what changes in December.

The 8-Hour Day and the 44-Hour Week

Article 58 of the CLT and Article 7 of the Constitution draw the two lines every Brazilian timesheet is read against: 8 hours a day and 44 hours a week, breaks excluded. A crew on five 8-hour days plus a 4-hour Saturday sits exactly on the weekly line. A crew on six 8-hour days is 4 hours over it.

Both lines count. A worker on four 10-hour days and one 4-hour day works 44 hours in the week and still has 8 overtime hours, 2 on each of the long days, because the daily line was crossed four times. The common Brazilian workaround, 8 hours and 48 minutes Monday to Friday with Saturday off, is a compensation arrangement, not an exception: the extra 48 minutes a day are offset by the Saturday that is not worked, and the arrangement has to be agreed in writing.

Article 58, Paragraph 1 adds a tolerance that matters to anyone running a punch clock: a punch within 5 minutes of the scheduled time, up to 10 minutes a day, is not counted as overtime or as lateness. Past 10 minutes in a day, every minute counts, including the first ten. That is the whole rule. It is narrower than the rounding habits American readers know from our 7-minute rule guide, and it is applied to the exact punch, not a rounded one.

The 50% Premium and the 2-Hour Cap

Article 59 of the CLT allows the normal day to be extended by up to 2 hours, by individual written agreement or collective bargaining, and Paragraph 1 sets the price: overtime pay at least 50% above the normal hourly rate. Collective agreements often set more. The cap is a limit on the working day itself, not just on what gets paid: a 12-hour day in a business with no special regime is a violation even if every hour is paid at 1.5×.

The normal hourly rate for a monthly-paid worker is the monthly salary divided by the monthly hours, 220 for a 44-hour week. Overtime earned in the month also feeds the paid weekly rest and the thirteenth salary, which is why Brazilian payroll departments treat habitual overtime as something to avoid, not just something to pay.

There is a lawful alternative to paying the premium. Under Article 59, Paragraph 2, an hours bank (banco de horas) agreed through collective bargaining lets extra hours in one period be offset by shorter days or days off within one year. Paragraph 5, added by the 2017 reform, allows a bank by individual written agreement when the offset happens within six months, and Paragraph 6 allows compensation within the same month by individual agreement, written or tacit. Hours still in the bank when the window closes are paid as overtime at the premium. A bank only works when the hours going into it and coming out of it are recorded to the minute.

Sundays, Holidays, and the Night Premium

Law 605 of 1949 and the Superior Labor Court's Súmula 146 govern the days off. Work on a Sunday or a public holiday that is not compensated with another day off is paid double, on top of the pay for the weekly rest itself. Give the replacement day and the double rate is not owed. The record has to show which happened.

Article 73 of the CLT governs the night. For urban workers, night work runs from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. and earns a premium of at least 20% over the day rate. Each hour inside that window is a reduced hour of 52 minutes and 30 seconds, so a worker who is present from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m., seven clock hours, is paid for eight. When a night shift runs past 5 a.m., the court's Súmula 60 extends the premium to the hours that follow. Rural workers have their own window and a 25% premium. A shift that crosses midnight has to be split at 10 p.m. and at 5 a.m. before any of this can be paid correctly, the same arithmetic our overnight shift guide walks through for US crews.

Breaks and Rest

Article 71 requires a meal break of at least one hour, and at most two, on any day longer than 6 hours. A day of 4 to 6 hours gets 15 minutes. The break is unpaid and does not count toward the 8 hours. Since the 2017 reform, a collective agreement can cut the one-hour break to 30 minutes. A break that is cut short without that agreement is paid as an indemnity for the missing minutes at the 50% premium.

Article 66 requires 11 consecutive hours of rest between two working days, and the weekly rest is 24 consecutive hours, preferably on Sunday. Together they give every worker a stretch of at least 35 hours off once a week. Hours worked inside the 11-hour gap are paid as overtime.

The Time Record Every Employer Must Keep

Article 74, Paragraph 2 of the CLT requires every employer with more than 20 employees to record each worker's start time, end time and break, by manual, mechanical or electronic means. The threshold was 10 until September 2019. Below the threshold the record is optional, but the court treats it as the employer's defense: Súmula 338 of the Superior Labor Court puts the burden of proving the hours on an employer who is required to keep them, and when the records are not produced, the hours the worker claims are presumed true unless the employer proves otherwise. Records that show identical punches every day, the "British" timesheet, are treated as no record at all.

Electronic recording is regulated by Ordinance 671 of 2021, which recognizes three kinds of system: a certified clock with a printer, an alternative device, and software. Whatever the system, the practical rule is the same: the time is recorded when the work starts and stops, the worker can see their own record, and the record is kept. Wage claims in Brazil reach back five years under Article 11 of the CLT, and can be filed up to two years after the employment ends, so a record that is complete for the last five years is the minimum that will stand up.

The Minimum Wage

The federal minimum wage for 2026 is R$1,621 a month, set by Decree 12.797 of 2025 and in force since 1 January 2026, a rise of R$103 from the R$1,518 of 2025. On the 220-hour month that is R$7.37 an hour. Several states set their own higher floors, and collective agreements set floors for many trades. The minimum wage is also the base for the premiums above: a minimum-wage worker's overtime hour is R$11.06, and a night hour inside the window is R$8.84 before the reduced-hour count is applied.

What Changes on 16 December 2026

Constitutional Amendment 141, promulgated and published on 16 October 2026, rewrites Article 7 of the Constitution. The new clause XIII sets the normal working day at 8 hours and the week at 40, and the new clause XV guarantees two days of paid weekly rest, one of them preferably a Sunday. The amendment's own Article 6 phases the week in: 42 hours two months after publication, on 16 December 2026, and 40 hours one year after that, on 16 December 2027. The two rest days apply from the first step. In practice the six-day week with one day off, the escala 6x1, ends for most Brazilian workers this December.

The rules around the change are as important as the number:

  • No pay cut. Article 2 says the shorter week and the extra rest day are implemented without any reduction in salary, nominal, proportional or otherwise, and that includes wage floors. A monthly salary that bought 44 hours now buys 42, which means the hourly rate goes up.
  • The daily limit stays at 8. During the 42-hour stage, a collective agreement can spread the week across five longer days. Without one, five 8-hour days is the safe schedule, and the old 8-hour-48-minute day becomes 48 minutes of overtime every day.
  • Existing agreements lose force. Article 3 says collective agreement clauses on working time and weekly rest that conflict with the amendment stop applying two months after publication. Hours banks built on a 44-hour week need their balances reviewed before the line moves.
  • Shorter weeks stay shorter. Article 4 says a schedule already at 40 hours or less is not cut further, though the two rest days still apply.
  • One exemption. Article 8 excludes employees who hold a university degree and earn at least 2.5 times the social security benefit ceiling, about R$21,189 a month in 2026, from the working-time and time-control rules unless the employer or a collective agreement extends them. Everyone else is covered.
  • Small businesses wait for a law. Article 5 lets a future complementary law create transitional measures for individual micro-entrepreneurs, micro and small businesses, conditioned on keeping jobs. Until that law exists, the same dates apply to every employer.

The 50% premium, the 2-hour daily cap, the night premium, the breaks and the record-keeping duty are all in the CLT and are not changed by the amendment. What changes is the line the premium is counted from.

How Punch Handles Brazilian Working Time

Punch ships a Brazil – CLT preset among its 60 country presets. Set your workspace's country to Brazil and the preset pays every hour past 8 in a day or 44 in a week at 1.5×, both lines at once, the way the CLT counts them. Sunday and holiday double pay depends on the calendar and on whether a day off was given, so the preset's footer tells you so and leaves those premiums to you.

When the week moves to 42 hours on 16 December, and to 40 a year later, switch the workspace to the Custom preset and set the weekly threshold yourself. The daily line, the multiplier and the rest of your rules stay as they were. The Custom preset is the same place to encode a collective agreement that pays more than 50%.

Underneath the rules is the record. Crew members punch in, punch out and start and end their meal break on their own iPhone, with the punch-in checked against a job-site geofence, never a camera in anyone's face. Hours that cross 10 p.m. and midnight are stored to the second, so the night window can be read out of them. Every shift comes to a manager for approval, where early punch-ins and long days are visible before they reach payroll, and the approved hours export to QuickBooks or a spreadsheet. The record is kept, and it is the worker's own punches, not an identical timesheet every day.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the overtime rate in Brazil?

At least 50% above the normal hourly rate for every hour past 8 in a day or 44 in a week, under Article 59, Paragraph 1 of the CLT. Collective agreements may set more. Work on a Sunday or public holiday without a replacement day off is paid double.

How many overtime hours can an employee work in Brazil?

At most 2 a day under Article 59 of the CLT, by written individual agreement or collective bargaining. The cap is on the hours worked, not just the hours paid.

Is the 44-hour week in Brazil changing?

Yes. Constitutional Amendment 141, promulgated 16 October 2026, cuts the normal week to 42 hours on 16 December 2026 and to 40 hours on 16 December 2027, with two paid rest days a week and no reduction in pay. The 8-hour daily limit does not change.

Do Brazilian employers have to record working hours?

Employers with more than 20 employees must, under Article 74, Paragraph 2 of the CLT. Smaller employers are not required to, but under Súmula 338 of the Superior Labor Court an employer who cannot produce a record generally loses a dispute over hours, so nearly every employer keeps one. Claims reach back five years.

What is the night premium in Brazil?

At least 20% over the day rate for work between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m., under Article 73 of the CLT, with each night hour counted as 52 minutes and 30 seconds, so seven clock hours of night work are paid as eight.

Keep a Brazilian Record That Holds Up

Brazilian working time is a set of lines drawn across the hours your crew actually works: 8 a day and 44 a week before the premium starts, 2 extra hours a day and no more, 10 p.m. before the night rate starts, one hour of meal break, 11 hours between days, one day off a week that becomes two this December, a weekly line that drops to 42 and then to 40, and a record of all of it that the court will presume against you if it is missing.

Punch records every punch in, punch out and break, applies the Brazil – CLT preset or your Custom thresholds, rolls up the day and the week, and exports approved hours straight to payroll. Pricing is flat per workspace, with no per-user line item, and every plan includes every feature. The 14-day free trial starts on signup, no credit card required.

Start tracking Brazilian hours correctly with Punch →

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