Best States for Overtime Workers (2026)

States with the highest minimum wages — Washington ($17.13), New York ($17.00/hr in NYC, Long Island & Westchester, $16.00/hr in the rest of the state), and Connecticut ($16.94) — have the highest mandatory overtime floors. At 1.5x, Washington workers earn at least $25.70/hr in overtime. However, high-tax states reduce the after-tax benefit.

Not at a special rate: overtime is wages, taxed under the same brackets as the rest of your pay. But it is earned on top of your base pay, so under progressive brackets the overtime dollars are your highest of the year and can reach a higher bracket, so the share of overtime lost to income tax can be higher than the share of base pay. Federal income tax uses progressive brackets everywhere, and so does state income tax in 29 states. On the Ohio overtime calculator's example ($20.00/hr, 10 overtime hours a week), Ohio tax takes 2.75% of the overtime against 1.83% of base pay. The state share is the same for overtime and base pay only in the 12 flat-tax states (one rate on every dollar) and zero in the 9 states that do not tax wage income. A bigger withholding on an overtime-heavy paycheck can also come from payroll annualizing that one check; your return settles the actual tax. Each state's overtime calculator works through its own example.