Under US federal law, short rest breaks, usually 20 minutes or less, count as paid working time. Meal periods, typically 30 minutes or more, are unpaid if the employee is completely relieved from duty. Federal law does not require employers to give breaks at all. Many states do, so check the rules where your employees work.
Key takeaways
- Short breaks are paid and count toward overtime.
- A meal break is unpaid only if the employee does no work during it.
- Eating at the desk while answering email is working time.
- Time tracking that deducts every short gap can end up deducting paid breaks.
Which breaks are paid?
Sources: DOL Fact Sheet 22 and the Department of Labor's page on breaks and meal periods.
| Break | Paid under federal rules? | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Coffee or rest break of 5 to 20 minutes | Yes | Counted as hours worked |
| Lunch of 30 minutes away from work | No | A bona fide meal period is not work time |
| Lunch at the desk while answering messages | Yes | The employee is not relieved from duty |
| A break extended without permission | Not always | See the conditions below |
| Waiting at the desk for work to arrive | Yes | An employee engaged to wait is working |
Does federal law require breaks?
No. The Department of Labor puts it plainly: federal law does not require lunch or coffee breaks. What federal law controls is how breaks are paid when an employer offers them.
Many states go further and require meal periods, rest breaks or both. Those rules differ by state and sometimes by industry.
When is a meal break unpaid?
When it meets three tests.
A meal period is unpaid when
- It is long enough to eat a regular meal, typically 30 minutes or more
- The employee is completely relieved from duty
- No work is done during it, whether active or inactive
The fact sheet says an employee is not relieved if required to perform any duties while eating. A receptionist who eats at the desk and answers the phone is working. So is a developer who is told to watch a deployment over lunch.
What about breaks that run long?
If an employee stretches an authorized break without permission, the extra time need not be counted as hours worked, provided the employer has expressly and unambiguously told employees three things:
- the break may last only a specific length of time
- any extension of the break is against the rules
- any extension will be punished
Without that communication, the safer course is to pay the time and deal with the behavior separately.
Do breaks count toward overtime?
Paid breaks do. A short rest break is hours worked, so it counts toward the 40 hours in a workweek. An unpaid meal period does not. See how to calculate overtime.
Example. An employee is at work for 8.5 hours a day, five days a week, with a 30-minute unpaid lunch and two 10-minute rest breaks. The lunch is taken off, the rest breaks are not. That is 8 hours a day and 40 hours for the week.
How should time tracking treat breaks?
This is where software can quietly get it wrong.
Time tracking tools mark a period as idle when there is no keyboard or mouse input past a threshold. A 10-minute coffee break looks exactly like 10 minutes of idle time. If you pay hourly staff only for active time, you are taking paid breaks out of their pay.
Do
- Pay short breaks as working time
- Ask people to pause tracking for an unpaid lunch
- Tell employees how long each kind of break is
- Review idle time as a pattern, not as a deduction
Do not
- Deduct every idle gap from paid hours
- Take a meal break off automatically when people work through it
- Expect people to stay reachable during an unpaid lunch
- Leave the break rules unwritten
Automatic meal deductions deserve a second look. If the system always removes 30 minutes and someone worked through lunch, that half hour is owed. More on reading idle time is in idle time at work.
What should a break policy say?
A simple break policy
- Rest breaks
- Two paid breaks of [10 or 15] minutes in a full shift
- Meal period
- [30 or 60] minutes, unpaid, with no work expected
- Recording
- Pause time tracking for the meal period. Do not pause for rest breaks
- Working through lunch
- Tell your manager the same day so the time is paid
- Extensions
- Rest breaks may not be extended without approval
- State rules
- [Add the meal and rest break rules of each state where you have staff]
How does BirdsEye handle breaks?
BirdsEye keeps three states apart, so you can apply your own pay rules to each.
- Working time. Tracked while the person is active.
- Idle time. Booked when keyboard and mouse stay untouched past the threshold you set. It is shown in its own color and kept apart from working time, not thrown away.
- Paused time. An employee pauses for a preset time, a custom number of minutes or until they resume, and the agent shows a reminder that tracking is paused.
For an unpaid lunch, people pause. For a paid coffee break, they do nothing, and the short idle period stays visible for you to treat as paid time. BirdsEye does not run payroll, so how each state is paid is your decision. See time tracking.
Frequently asked questions
Are 15-minute breaks paid?
Under federal rules, yes. Rest periods of short duration, usually 20 minutes or less, are counted as hours worked.
Is a lunch break paid?
Not if it is a real meal period, typically 30 minutes or more, in which the employee is completely relieved from duty. If the employee works while eating, the time is paid.
Do employers have to give breaks?
Federal law does not require them. Many states do, so check state law.
Can an employer deduct lunch automatically?
It can deduct a meal period that was taken. If the employee worked through it, the time must be paid, so an automatic deduction needs a way to correct it.