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Daylight Saving Time Payroll: The 7-Hour Night, the 9-Hour Night, and Crews Across Time Zones (2026)

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Daylight Saving Time Payroll: The 7-Hour Night, the 9-Hour Night, and Crews Across Time Zones (2026)

The short answer: Twice a year the clock lies about how long a shift was. When daylight saving time ends at 2:00 a.m., an overnight crew works the 1:00 hour twice and puts in nine hours on an eight-hour schedule. When it begins, that same crew works seven. The Fair Labor Standards Act asks one question in both cases: how many hours did the employee actually work? Credit those. If the extra hour pushes the week past 40, it is overtime. The whole problem disappears when the record comes from real timestamps instead of a schedule, which is what Punch does.

In 2026 the dates are early on both ends. Clocks moved forward on Sunday, March 8, and they fall back on Sunday, November 1, at 2:00 a.m. If you run a security patrol, a bakery, a snow crew, a 24-hour shop, or anything with a night rotation, November 1 is a payroll event on your calendar whether you put it there or not.

The Two Nights That Do Not Add Up

Take a common night shift. An employee starts at 11:00 p.m. and ends at 7:30 a.m. with a 30-minute unpaid lunch. Eight hours on paper, every night of the year, except two.

On the March night, the clocks jump from 2:00 a.m. to 3:00 a.m. The 2:00 hour never happens, so the employee starts and ends exactly on schedule and works seven hours. On the November night, the clocks fall back from 2:00 a.m. to 1:00 a.m. The employee works the 1:00 hour twice. Same start, same end, nine hours of work.

Nothing about the schedule changed. The schedule is simply the wrong instrument for measuring those two nights.

The Federal Rule Is One Sentence

The Department of Labor addresses this directly in its FLSA Hours Worked Advisor, using nearly the same 11:00 p.m. to 7:30 a.m. example. Its conclusion: the FLSA requires that employees be credited with all of the hours actually worked, so the employee worked seven hours on the day daylight saving time begins and nine hours on the day it ends.

That settles the two questions owners argue about.

You owe the ninth hour in November. It is worked time. It is not a scheduling glitch, and paying eight because the schedule said eight is an underpayment for that shift.

You owe seven in March, not eight. The hour was never worked, so federal law does not require pay for it. You may choose to pay a full eight as a matter of policy, and many employers do so the two nights wash out across the year. That is a decision, not an obligation, and if you make it, write it in your timekeeping policy so it is applied the same way to everyone.

The Ninth Hour Lands in a Workweek, and It Can Be Overtime

The extra hour is not a separate bucket of pay. It falls into a workweek like any other hour.

Under 29 CFR 778.105, a workweek is a fixed and regularly recurring period of 168 hours, seven consecutive 24-hour periods. It does not have to match the calendar week, it can start any day at any hour, and once you set it, it stays set. The clock change does not move that boundary and does not give you a 169-hour workweek to play with. It just means one employee has an hour of work that the wall clock recorded twice.

So run the normal math. Nine hours instead of eight is one more hour in whichever workweek those hours fall in. A crew member who would have closed the week at 40 closes it at 41, and that hour is overtime at time and a half on the regular rate. If you run a shift differential for nights, that differential is part of the regular rate, so the extra hour raises the overtime rate as well as the hour count.

States with daily overtime make November 1 more expensive on its own. In California, Labor Code 510 owes time and a half after eight hours in a workday. A nine-hour fall-back shift produces an hour of daily overtime even in a week that never reaches 40. Our California overtime guide covers how the workday is measured there.

Arizona, Hawaii, and the Crews Who Cross a Line

The clock change is not national. The Uniform Time Act of 1966 lets states exempt themselves from daylight saving time, and two have. Hawaii and most of Arizona have stayed on standard time since 1967. The Navajo Nation observes daylight saving time inside Arizona so it stays aligned with its land in Utah and New Mexico, which means that between the March and November changeovers a single drive across northern Arizona can cross an hour-wide line on the map.

Time zone lines themselves are federal, drawn county by county in 49 CFR Part 71 rather than by longitude. Portions of Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, and Tennessee sit in Central Time while the rest of each state runs on Eastern. A service crew working both sides of that line in one day is not unusual in those states, it is Tuesday.

Two rules keep this from turning into a payroll argument.

Pick one workweek and keep every hour in it. 29 CFR 778.105 lets you establish a single workweek for the whole establishment. Do that. A crew that crosses a zone line still has one seven-day window, not two, and you should not be reassigning hours to a different week because a truck drove west.

Record the moment, not the wall clock. A punch is an instant in time. What changes across a zone line is only how that instant is displayed. If your record keeps the true moment and converts it consistently, a crossing is arithmetic. If your record is a number a foreman wrote down in whichever local time he happened to be standing in, a crossing is a guess. 29 CFR 516.2 puts the burden of an accurate record on you, and a guess is exactly what an auditor will not accept. Our multi-state crew guide covers which state's overtime law follows those hours.

The Bill That Has Not Passed Yet

There is a live effort to end the twice-yearly change. The Sunshine Protection Act, H.R. 139, would make daylight saving time permanent nationally with a state opt-out. The House passed it on July 14, 2026, by a vote of 308 to 117 (Roll Call 238). It then went to the Senate, where it has not been enacted.

Until it is signed into law and takes effect, the schedule set by the Energy Policy Act of 2005 still governs. Clocks fall back on November 1, 2026, the ninth hour is still worked, and it is still owed. Plan the payroll you have, not the one Congress is debating.

How Punch Handles It

Every part of this problem is a record-keeping problem wearing a legal costume. Punch is built so the record never depends on what the schedule said.

  • The punch is the source, not the schedule. An employee punches in at 11:00 p.m. and punches out at 7:30 a.m. Punch records the actual moments and the actual elapsed time. On November 1 that shift reads nine hours because nine hours happened. On March 8 it reads seven. Nobody has to remember to adjust anything. Lunch is its own pair of timestamps, so an unpaid break on a clock-change night is measured, not assumed.
  • One time zone and one workweek, both set once. An owner picks the organization's time zone in Settings and the day the pay period starts, weekly or bi-weekly, for the whole organization. The extra hour lands in the correct workday and the correct week automatically.
  • Overtime recalculates itself. Punch applies the overtime rules for your location from more than 50 country and state presets, including weekly thresholds, daily thresholds, and double time. A nine-hour shift in California produces daily overtime without anyone reaching for a calculator.
  • A punch works without signal. A night crew on a rural route punches offline and the punch syncs when service returns, with its original timestamp intact.
  • Approvals and payroll stay clean. The unusual night lands in the manager approval queue beside every other shift, one tap or in bulk, and flows to payroll through Reports, the QuickBooks Online integration, or a QuickBooks or Excel CSV export.
  • A geofence verifies the job site, never a camera verifies the worker. Punch confirms an on-site punch in with GPS. No facial recognition, no photo at the punch. Trust beats surveillance.

Every feature is on every plan. Pricing is flat per organization rather than per seat, and owners are always free, so adding the night crew that actually has this problem never adds a per-user line item the way it would on a per-seat competitor.

Daylight Saving Time Payroll FAQ

Do I have to pay employees for the extra hour when clocks fall back?

Yes, if they worked it. The Department of Labor's Hours Worked Advisor is explicit that employees must be credited with all hours actually worked, so a scheduled eight-hour overnight shift that spans the 2:00 a.m. change in November is a nine-hour shift and is paid as nine.

Do I have to pay eight hours when clocks spring forward and they only worked seven?

Federal law does not require it, because the hour was not worked. You can choose to pay a full shift as a policy so the two nights offset each other over the year. Apply it consistently and put it in writing.

Does the extra hour count toward overtime?

Yes. It is an hour worked, so it counts toward the 40-hour weekly threshold, and toward any daily threshold your state sets. A nine-hour shift in a state with daily overtime after eight owes an overtime hour even if the week stays under 40.

What about salaried nonexempt employees?

The hours still have to be recorded, and overtime is still owed on hours over the threshold. If you use the fluctuating workweek method, the extra hour changes the divisor and therefore the regular rate for that week. Our fluctuating workweek guide walks through the calculation.

Do Arizona and Hawaii employers deal with this at all?

Not for the clock change itself, since Hawaii and most of Arizona stay on standard time year round. Their offset to the rest of the country still shifts twice a year, so scheduling, dispatch, and any crew working across the Navajo Nation boundary need attention.

Which day does the ninth hour belong to?

The day it was worked, inside the workweek you established. Crossing midnight or crossing a time zone line changes the calendar label, not the workweek.

The Bottom Line

Two nights a year, the schedule and the timesheet disagree. Federal law sides with the timesheet. Credit every hour actually worked, run those hours through the fixed workweek you already set, apply weekly and daily overtime normally, and do not let the calendar or a time zone line decide anything.

The owners who get caught by November 1 are the ones reconstructing a night shift from a schedule on Monday morning. Punch records the punch when it happens, keeps it in the right workweek, and recalculates overtime on its own, so a 25-hour day is just a day with accurate numbers on it. Every plan includes every feature, owners are always free, and pricing is flat per workspace. The 14-day free trial starts on signup, no credit card required.

This article is general information, not legal advice. State overtime, wage payment, and scheduling laws vary and are often stricter than the FLSA. Confirm your obligations with an employment attorney or your state labor agency.

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