My paycheck looks short. How do I check it?

Usually you can't prove it either way, because a stub is built to be filed, not read. This page shows you how to check one line by line — including the trap that makes a perfectly correct stub look like you've been underpaid by four figures, and the two errors that are genuinely worth hundreds.

The week we'll use

A 14-on/7-off hitch at $35/hr, twelve-hour days. That's 84 hours a week, and overtime is calculated per week, so:

Hold onto $3,710. Everything below is measured against it.

1. The overtime premium — why a correct stub can look $1,540 short

This is the big one, and it catches almost everybody.

Many payrolls don't pay 40 hours at 1× and 44 at 1.5×. They pay every hour in the regular line at 1×, then add a separate half-time line covering only the overtime hours. Same money, different presentation:

Identical to the first table. Exactly correct. Nothing is missing.

How to tell which kind of stub you have: add the hours in the regular line to the hours in the overtime line. If the total is more than you actually worked, you have a premium-style stub and the regular line already contains your overtime hours.

2. Missing hours — small on the stub, large in cash

Six overtime hours that never made it onto the stub, at that rate, is $315.

The reason this slips past is that the gross still looks big. Nobody checks a $3,700 cheque as carefully as a $400 one. Compare the hours on the stub against your own record, day by day — not the total, the individual days. A missing half-shift is invisible in a weekly total and obvious in a daily one.

This is also why overtime errors cluster on uneven weeks: a short day beside a long one is exactly where hand-calculations and misconfigured payroll rules go wrong.

3. Which overtime rule applies to you

Two things change the answer completely:

• Weekly overtime (federal standard): anything past 40 hours in a workweek. This is what most people are on.
• Daily overtime: anything past 8 or 12 hours in a day, depending on the state and the employer. California is the well-known case.

On a 14/7 of twelves those produce very different numbers, and your hours must be split per actual day, not averaged across the week. Averaging a week that mixes a short day with a long one always understates the overtime. If your employer's system averages, you lose the difference every single time.

4. The FICA base — the line nobody checks

Social Security and Medicare are not charged on your gross. They're charged on gross minus certain pre-tax deductions, and the rule catches people out:

On roughly $128,613 a year with $4,800 of medical:

$367 a year, quietly, for a deduction you're already paying for. And it runs the other way too: if a payroll wrongly treats your 401(k) as FICA-exempt, it under-withholds — which feels like more money now and isn't.

5. Per diem

Per diem is paid on days worked, not hours, so it never changes your overtime. Whether it's taxed depends on how your employer runs it — an accountable plan with substantiated expenses is handled differently from a flat allowance added to your cheque. It moves your monthly total without moving your rate, which is exactly why it confuses the comparison when two people on the same rate compare cheques.

What this should leave you with

On that 14/7 at $35/hr — Texas, single filer, no pre-tax deductions:

$8,264 a month — you keep 77%. If your own figure is materially below that on the same inputs, one of the five sections above is why.

Common questions

My regular hours look higher than the hours I worked. Is that wrong?

Probably not. Many payrolls put every hour in the regular line at straight time and add a separate half-time premium covering the overtime hours. The gross is the same. Add the regular and overtime hours together — if the total exceeds what you worked, that's the format you're on, and your overtime hours are counted once, not twice.

How much is one missing overtime hour worth?

At $35/hr base, one overtime hour is $52.50. Six of them is $315 — easy to miss on a cheque of several thousand, which is exactly why it goes unnoticed.

Is overtime calculated per day or per week?

Per week under federal rules — anything past 40 hours in a workweek. Some states and employers also apply daily overtime past 8 or 12 hours. If yours is daily, your hours must be split by actual day, because averaging a week that mixes short and long days always understates the overtime.

Is my 401(k) exempt from Social Security and Medicare?

No. Retirement contributions reduce your income tax but not your FICA. Section 125 benefits — medical, dental, vision, HSA/FSA — do reduce the FICA base. Mixing the two up is worth a few hundred dollars a year in either direction.

Does per diem affect my overtime?

No. It's paid per day worked, not per hour, so it never enters the overtime calculation. It does change your monthly total, which is why two people on the same rate can see very different cheques.

More on shift pay

• 14/7 hitch take-home pay: what $35/hr actually leaves — where the 44 overtime hours in this page's example come from.
• Three 12s a week: what $45/hr actually pays a nurse — the opposite problem, where you never reach overtime at all.
• Day rate vs hourly: which actually pays more? — if you are paid by the day, the overtime may be missing entirely.
• Is a $3 raise worth 10 more hours a week? — what an overtime hour is really worth once you price it against a raise.
• All Cimplora pay guides