No. An employer generally cannot require you to make up time you missed from work. Legitimate make-up time is a voluntary arrangement that the employee initiates, and pressuring or requiring an employee to reschedule missed hours can create wage, overtime, and retaliation liability for the employer. Federal law does not directly address make-up time, so the specifics depend on your state, but the voluntariness rule shows up everywhere the arrangement is recognized.
What Make-Up Time Actually Is
Make-up time lets an employee who leaves early or arrives late reschedule those missed hours within the same workweek, without triggering overtime pay. The employee’s total weekly hours stay at or below 40, so no extra pay is owed because no extra hours are worked. The hours are simply rearranged.
This is different from compensatory time off, and the distinction matters. Comp time is when an employer gives paid time off later instead of paying overtime for hours already worked over 40. Private-sector employers are generally prohibited from doing that under the Fair Labor Standards Act, which requires nonexempt employees to receive at least one and one-half times their regular rate for hours over 40 in a workweek.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 USC 207 – Maximum Hours If your employer is proposing to swap time off for overtime pay, that is not make-up time and it is not legal in the private sector.
The Rule: Make-Up Time Must Be Employee-Initiated
Where state make-up time statutes exist, they share a set of core features, and voluntariness sits at the top. Common requirements include:
- The employee must request make-up time voluntarily. The employer cannot suggest, encourage, or require it.
- Each instance requires a separate signed written request from the employee, stating the reason for the missed time and the proposed makeup schedule.
- The make-up hours must be worked within the same workweek the time was originally missed.
- Make-up hours that push the employee past a daily cap (commonly 11 hours in a day) still trigger overtime.
- Hours beyond 40 in the workweek are not protected from overtime calculations, regardless of whether they are make-up hours.
The voluntary-participation piece is where policies most often break down. If a supervisor routinely offers make-up time as an alternative to using paid time off, or treats it as the default when someone needs to step out for an appointment, the pattern starts to look like employer-directed scheduling rather than an employee-initiated request. A manager who suggests, pressures, or requires you to make up hours is stepping outside the arrangement the law protects.
What About States With No Make-Up Time Statute?
Most states do not have a specific make-up time law. In those states, employers have more flexibility in how they structure scheduling, but they also lack a statutory safe harbor. That does not change the underlying wage rules: any hour you work is compensable, and if rescheduling pushes you over the applicable overtime threshold, overtime is owed. It also does not give the employer a special power to compel you to work rescheduled hours you did not agree to.
When “Making Up Time” Becomes an Overtime Violation
Even a genuinely voluntary make-up arrangement can turn into a wage violation if the hours cross the wrong line. If you are nonexempt, watch three boundaries.
The 40-Hour Weekly Line
The FLSA requires overtime pay for hours over 40 in a workweek.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 USC 207 – Maximum Hours The moment rescheduled hours push your weekly total past 40, overtime kicks in regardless of why the hours were rearranged. An employer that labels those extra hours “make-up” to avoid the premium is misclassifying overtime.
The Same-Workweek Boundary
A workweek under federal regulations is a fixed, regularly recurring period of 168 hours, or seven consecutive 24-hour periods.2eCFR. 29 CFR 778.105 – Workweek The FLSA does not allow averaging hours across multiple workweeks. An employee who works 30 hours one week and 50 the next is owed overtime for the second week even though the two-week average is 40. That is why make-up hours have to happen in the same workweek as the absence. If your employer wants you to “bank” missed hours and work them off next week, that arrangement does not qualify as make-up time and will likely generate an overtime obligation in the second week.
Daily Overtime States
The FLSA only sets a weekly overtime threshold, but a small number of states also require overtime pay after eight hours in a single day. In those states, make-up time gets tricky: if you leave two hours early on Wednesday and work two extra hours on Thursday, you may hit the daily overtime threshold on Thursday even though your weekly total stays at 40. States with daily overtime laws sometimes include specific make-up time exceptions, but the exception only applies when the employer follows the state’s procedural requirements — including the written-request and voluntariness rules — to the letter. A required or undocumented make-up arrangement in a daily-overtime state can retroactively void the exemption for every affected workday.
If You Decline, You Are Protected From Retaliation
Turning down a make-up time request, or raising concerns about how it is being administered, is protected activity. Section 15(a)(3) of the FLSA prohibits employers from firing or otherwise penalizing any employee for filing a wage complaint, participating in an investigation, or cooperating in an FLSA proceeding.3Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 USC 215 – Prohibited Acts The protection applies whether the complaint is oral or written, and most courts have held it covers internal complaints to an employer.4U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 77A – Prohibiting Retaliation Under the Fair Labor Standards Act
The retaliation risk shows up in ordinary ways. If you refuse a manager’s informal suggestion to “just make up the hours” and ask for overtime pay or to use PTO instead, you have raised a wage concern. Discipline, reduced hours, or unfavorable assignments after that point can support a retaliation claim. The same is true if you point out that the company’s make-up time practice does not comply with state requirements, even if you turn out to be wrong about the law.
Remedies for retaliation include reinstatement, back pay, and liquidated damages equal to the lost wages.4U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 77A – Prohibiting Retaliation Under the Fair Labor Standards Act
What Your Employer Is Supposed to Document
Federal law requires employers to keep records of hours worked each workday and total hours each workweek for every nonexempt employee, along with the regular hourly rate, total straight-time earnings, and overtime pay for each pay period.5eCFR. 29 CFR 516.2 – Employees Subject to Minimum Wage or Minimum Wage and Overtime Provisions Payroll records must be kept for at least three years, and supporting time cards, schedules, and earnings records for at least two years.6eCFR. 29 CFR Part 516 – Records to Be Kept by Employers
For a make-up time arrangement to hold up, the file should include your signed written request with the date of the missed time, the proposed make-up schedule, and the supervisor’s written approval, along with the actual hours worked on both the short day and the make-up day. If your employer never asked you to submit anything in writing, or the “request” was really a manager telling you when to come in, that gap cuts against the employer, not you. The burden falls on the employer to show the arrangement was voluntary, properly documented, and did not result in unpaid overtime.
What It Costs the Employer to Get This Wrong
When a make-up arrangement fails to comply with applicable law, the most common consequence is an unpaid overtime claim. Under the FLSA, an employer that violates the overtime provisions owes the full amount of unpaid overtime compensation plus an equal amount in liquidated damages, effectively doubling the liability.7Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 USC 216 – Penalties The employer can avoid liquidated damages only by proving it acted in good faith and reasonably believed its practices complied with the law, which is difficult without documentation.
The statute of limitations is two years for standard FLSA violations and three years for willful violations. Because make-up arrangements tend to repeat, a single flawed practice can generate claims covering many pay periods across multiple employees.7Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 USC 216 – Penalties State penalties can add significant exposure on top of federal liability, including per-employee penalties for wage violations, waiting-time penalties for delayed payment, or percentage-based damages that accrue over time.
What You Can Do
If your employer is telling you that you have to make up missed hours, a few things are worth knowing. You can decline. You can ask to use accrued paid time off, or to take the absence unpaid, instead of rescheduling the hours. If you agree to reschedule, ask for it in writing and keep a copy. Check the hours carefully: any week where the rescheduled hours push your total over 40, or any day where they push you past your state’s daily overtime threshold, is a week where overtime should appear on your pay stub.
If overtime is owed and not paid, or if you are penalized for pushing back on a required make-up arrangement, you can file a complaint with the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division or with your state labor agency. Complaints can be made orally or in writing, and the anti-retaliation provisions protect you from being fired or disciplined for raising the concern.4U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 77A – Prohibiting Retaliation Under the Fair Labor Standards Act