What Is a Workweek?

While you may think that the workweek begins on Monday morning and ends on Friday night, this need not be the case. A workweek is defined by law as any seven, consecutive 24-hour period and begins at any time on any day. Therefore your employees' workweek, for pay purposes, may start at noon on Wednesday and end at 11:59 am on the following Wednesday, for instance.

So, a workweek can be any fixed and recurring period of 168 hours (seven days at 24 hours each).

Understanding the workweek concept is crucial in payroll calculations, including:

• calculating how many hours an employee worked in a workweek
• calculating the regular rate of an employee