Mandatory Overtime Labor Law Requirements in Missouri (MO)

Missouri has your pretty standard basic overtime labor laws—until you start reading a little deeper into the law. Then you discover an interesting difference or two between the Missouri law and the laws of other states, as well as the federal guidelines on overtime pay, which can be found in the Fair Labor Standards Act.

But first let’s look at the similarities between Missouri’s law and the others. Missouri’s overtime labor law is based for the most part and for most occupations on the standard 40 hour work week. That means that any employee who works more than 40 hours in a week is entitled to premium pay—at least one and a half times their normal wage—for all that time over 40 hours. This law matches the rule in the Fair Labor Standards Act, or FLSA for short.

Basically, the Missouri law defers to the federal law when it comes to exceptions to the overtime law. That means that employees who receive salaries generally are excluded from receiving overtime. This is not always the case, but a good general guideline. This includes people considered to be bona fide professionals, executives and administrators.

Where Missouri’s law gets interesting, though, is another group of employees that it singles out for special treatment. These special employees are people who work at amusement or recreation-type businesses. For these folks, the law states that their work week is not 40 hours. It’s 52 hours in a week.

So they do not receive overtime, or are not legally mandated to receive it at least, until after they put in their 52 hours in the week. In that case, they would still earn the standard premium pay due to overtime hours, which as we discussed before, is one and a half times their normal rate for all time spent working over those 52 hours.