Daylight Saving Time and Night Shifts: 7 Hours or 9?

The answer for a typical night shift

Take a shift that starts at 10:00 PM on Saturday and ends at 6:30 AM on Sunday, with a 30-minute unpaid meal break. On an ordinary night it is 8:00 of work.

A 12-hour night shows the same pattern. A 7:00 PM–7:30 AM shift with a 30-minute break is 12:00 on an ordinary night, 13:00 on the fall-back night and 11:00 on the spring-forward night.

In everyday terms, the fall-back Sunday has 25 hours and the spring-forward Sunday has 23. Anyone on the clock through 2:00 AM gets the extra hour or loses it.

The dates: 2026 and 2027

Under 15 U.S.C. 260a, daylight saving time begins at 2:00 AM on the second Sunday of March and ends at 2:00 AM on the first Sunday of November. Applied to the next changes:

In 2026, daylight saving time began on Sunday, March 8.

Where the clock does not change. States may exempt themselves by law. The U.S. Department of Transportation lists Hawaii and most of Arizona among the places that do not observe daylight saving time, along with Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands. There, the 10:00 PM–6:30 AM shift is 8:00 on every night of the year. Part of Arizona does change its clocks, though. If you work in Arizona, check whether your workplace clock changes; the hours calculator asks rather than guessing from the state.

Why pay follows the hours, not the clock

The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) pays for hours worked. The Department of Labor’s Fact Sheet #22 says the amount an employee should receive cannot be determined without knowing the number of hours worked. On the fall-back night, 9:30 passes between a 10:00 PM punch and a 6:30 AM punch. Take off the 30-minute break and 9:00 is hours worked, including the repeated hour.

The extra hour in November counts toward overtime. Overtime under the FLSA is over 40 hours in a workweek, at 1.5 times the regular rate. Take a worker on five night shifts, Tuesday through Saturday, each 10:00 PM–6:30 AM with a 30-minute break, $24.50 an hour, in a workweek that starts Monday.

In the fall-back week the extra hour is the 41st, so it is paid at time and a half under the federal rule. In a state with a daily overtime rule over 8 hours, the 9-hour night also passes the daily line. The overtime laws table covers all 50 states and DC.

The missing hour in March. The FLSA does not require payment for time not worked; the Department of Labor gives vacations and holidays as examples and calls those benefits a matter of agreement between employer and employee. On the spring-forward night, the employee did not work the skipped hour, so federal law does not require paying it. An employer may still choose to pay the scheduled 8 hours as a policy or under a contract. That is the employer’s choice, and the policy or agreement is where to look.

Who decides a disagreement about these hours is your employer first. Your state labor department or the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division can investigate. This is general information, not legal advice.

How to write it on a time card

1. Write the clock times as they were. In at 10:00 PM, out at 6:30 AM. Do not change the out time to make the arithmetic work.
2. Write the date of the night, and add a note. For example: DST ended at 2:00 AM; 9:00 worked. The note tells whoever totals the card that the span is not a mistake.
3. Total the night by real elapsed time. Fall back: clock span plus 1 hour. Spring forward: clock span minus 1 hour. Then take off the unpaid break as usual.
4. Check the daily total on the stub. On the fall-back night it should show 9:00 (9.00 hours) for the example shift, not 8:00. On the spring-forward night it should show 7:00 (7.00).
5. Watch for punches inside the changeover hour. On the fall-back night, 1:30 AM happens twice. A break that starts at 1:30 AM is ambiguous unless you note which one: before the clock change (the first 1:30, daylight time) or after it (the second 1:30, standard time). On the spring-forward night, a time like 2:30 AM does not exist at all. Write down what the clock showed and add a note.

If your clock does not change, as in Hawaii and most of Arizona, none of this applies, but a coworker or a payroll office in another state may assume it does. If a card shows 9:00 or 7:00 for a shift that was really 8:00, ask about it.

Common questions

Does the shift belong to Saturday or Sunday? Most cards list a shift on the day it started. For overtime, what matters is the workweek the hours fall in. If your workweek starts at midnight on Sunday, part of a Saturday night shift falls in the next week. The guide on calculating hours worked shows how to split a shift at the workweek boundary.

My time clock fixed it automatically. Should I still check? Yes. Look at the total for that one night. The repeated or skipped hour is easy to lose when software subtracts clock times without dates.

Next step

Put the shift into the hours calculator with the date of the night. It asks whether your clock changes for daylight saving time, gives the real length of the shift in hours and minutes and decimals, and flags any punch inside the changeover hour. For a whole week on one card, use the time card calculator with a start date.