Are Breaks Paid? Rest Breaks, Meal Periods and State Rules

Federal law: no break required, but short breaks are paid

The U.S. Department of Labor states it plainly: federal law does not require lunch or coffee breaks. Whether to offer them is up to the employer, unless a state law or a contract says otherwise.

What federal law does set is how breaks count when they are given:

• Short rest breaks are hours worked. Under 29 CFR 785.18, rest periods of about 5 to 20 minutes must be counted as hours worked. They count toward the 40 hours for overtime. They also cannot be offset against other working time.
• Bona fide meal periods are not work time. Under 29 CFR 785.19, the employee must be completely relieved from duty to eat a regular meal. Ordinarily 30 minutes or more is long enough, and a shorter period may be long enough under special conditions.
• Eating while working is not a meal period. 785.19 gives the examples of an office worker required to eat at the desk and a factory worker required to stay at the machine. Both are working while eating, and that time counts.
• You do not have to be allowed to leave. A meal period can be bona fide on the premises, as long as you are otherwise completely freed from duties.

One limit runs the employer’s way. Fact Sheet #22 says unauthorized extensions of an authorized break need not be counted as hours worked. That applies when the employer has clearly said how long the break may last, that going over is against the rules, and that going over will be punished.

A quick check of the numbers: a shift from 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. is 8:30 (8.50 hours) on the clock. With a bona fide 30-minute meal period, it is 8:00 (8.00 hours) worked. With only a paid 15-minute rest break, nothing is deducted, so it stays 8:30 (8.50 hours).

States that require meal or rest breaks

The site’s break data covers all 50 states and DC, each row with its source and the date it was read.

Meal periods for adults are required in 19 states: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, North Dakota, Oregon, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Vermont, Washington and West Virginia.

Rest breaks for adults are required in 8 states: California, Colorado, Kentucky, Minnesota, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont and Washington. Seven set a paid break of a fixed length; Vermont’s rule is a reasonable opportunity to eat and use the toilet.

Narrower rules apply in a few more. Maryland requires shift breaks only at large retail employers, those with 50 or more retail employees in the state. Nebraska requires a lunch period only in assembling plants, workshops and mechanical establishments. Illinois also requires rest breaks for hotel room attendants in Cook County.

The other 32 jurisdictions have no general adult meal or rest break requirement, so the federal rules above apply there. That count includes Maryland and Nebraska, whose rules cover only the workplaces just named. For a few rows, the finding rests on the Department of Labor’s state tables rather than a statement from the state itself. The break laws by state page shows each row’s status and source.

The headline rule in each of the 19 states, from the data:

Most of these rules have exceptions, such as union contracts, written waivers, small staffs or particular industries. Some states also set what happens when a break is missed; in California it is one extra hour of pay at the regular rate per workday for a missed meal period, and one for a missed rest period. The table is the headline only. Your state’s row on the break laws page has the conditions and the source.

Where a state requires a meal period, it is usually unpaid when you are fully relieved of duty, as under federal law. A few statutes, including Connecticut’s, Illinois’s, Massachusetts’s and West Virginia’s, do not say whether the meal period is paid. Where a state requires a rest break of a set length, the break is paid.

Auto-deducted lunches

Many payroll systems subtract 30 minutes a day for lunch automatically. That is not a problem in itself, as long as a real 30-minute meal period happened. The problem is a lunch that was interrupted or worked through but still deducted.

Two federal rules apply. Work an employer suffers or permits is work time, whatever the reason the employee kept working (29 CFR 785.11). And 29 CFR 785.13 puts the duty on management: if it does not want work done, it has to see that the work is not performed. Making a rule against it is not enough. A meal period during which you answer calls, watch a station or eat at your post is not a bona fide meal period under 785.19.

Example, with stated inputs: $18.00 an hour, Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., 30 minutes deducted each day.

Because the deducted time often falls in a week near 40 hours, a missed lunch can turn into overtime, not just straight time.

What to do if your breaks or pay do not match

1. Write it down the same day. Note the date, when the meal period started and ended, and what interrupted it.
2. Check your time record against your notes. Look for a fixed 30-minute deduction on days you worked through.
3. Ask your supervisor or payroll to correct the record. Many employers have a form for a missed or interrupted meal period.
4. If it is not resolved, your state labor department handles state break rules. For the federal hours-worked rules, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division (1-866-487-9243) can investigate.

Employers: if you auto-deduct, give employees a simple way to cancel the deduction when a meal period is missed, and pay for that time.

Next step

Enter your in and out times and the break you actually took in the time card calculator. It counts only the break minutes you enter, adds the week in minutes and shows any overtime. For the full rule in your state, open the break laws by state page.