What does overtime really buy?
You pay time-and-a-half. Fatigue takes some of it back. See how much of your overtime turns into finished work, and how much becomes the fatigue tax.
The true cost of overtime is more than the extra hours. You pay a premium (typically 1.5 times base), output per hour drops as fatigue builds across consecutive long days, and the errors it causes add rework. Add the premium, the lost productivity, and the rework and the real cost of sustained overtime often reaches 2 to 2.5 times the base rate.
Your numbers
The efficiency curve is a standard construction overtime productivity-loss model: output per hour falls as daily overtime rises and long days stack up. Your hours and rate drive the dollars; the curve estimates how much of it comes back as work.
Overtime ROI
PODOT hours vs efficiency
Return on OT
Rates
The premium and fatigue are eating in — a real share of your overtime dollars is not coming back
ROI here is the straight-time value of output recovered per overtime dollar. The time-and-a-half premium caps it near 67 percent, so overtime is a schedule decision, not a labor-cost win.
An estimate is a start. Your real numbers are better.
This tool models the fatigue curve. POD reads the daily reports and hours your team already produces and tracks overtime, productivity, and the rework that follows it on every project, from your actual data instead of a general curve.
The premium
Overtime typically pays time-and-a-half, so every OT hour costs 50% more than a straight-time hour before any productivity loss.
The fatigue curve
Output per hour drops as daily overtime rises and consecutive long days stack up. By the end of a long stretch, a real share of each hour is lost.
The return
What is left, the share of overtime that becomes finished work, is your real return. Short and occasional keeps it high; long and sustained erodes it.
Questions & answers
Usually yes. You pay a premium rate, typically time-and-a-half, and output per hour falls as workers tire across consecutive long days. The real cost is the premium plus the productivity you lose to fatigue and the rework it drives.
Method & sources
The productivity-decay curve reflects widely cited construction studies showing that sustained 50- and 60-hour weeks lose output per hour to fatigue, absenteeism and rework. It is an estimate applied to the hours you enter, not a measurement of your crew — a directional way to price whether the extra hours are actually buying extra progress. Your real loss depends on trade, duration and conditions.
Sources: MCAA — Overtime & Productivity in Construction · The Business Roundtable — Scheduled Overtime Effect (Report C-2) · H.R. Thomas, ASCE — labor productivity research
Methodology reviewed by the Plan of Day construction team · July 2026
The decay curve is an estimate; the hours and rates are yours.
Track overtime on your own project.
POD keeps overtime, output, and the rework that trails them live per crew, drawn from the timecards and reports your team already files, so you watch the fatigue tax accrue instead of finding it at payroll close.
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Last updated: July 2026