Glossary · Wage & Hour

Off-the-Clock Work: When Unrecorded Work Time Must Be Paid

By Steve Levine · Updated July 2, 2026 · 8 min read

Quick Answer

Off-the-clock work is work performed but never recorded or paid — pre-shift setup, post-shift closing duties, working through an unpaid meal break, or answering work messages at home. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act's “suffer or permit to work” standard, time the employer knows or should know is being worked must be paid, even if it was never authorized, and those hours count toward overtime. When employer time records are missing or wrong, workers can prove their hours by reasonable estimate under Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery. Systematic off-the-clock work is one of the most common foundations for wage and hour class actions.

The “Suffer or Permit to Work” Standard

The FLSA defines “employ” unusually broadly: to “suffer or permit to work” (29 U.S.C. § 203(g)). The phrase does a lot of work. It means an employer owes wages not just for hours it scheduled or approved, but for any work it knows or has reason to know is being performed for its benefit. A manager who watches an employee roll silverware before clocking in, or who emails questions to someone at 9 p.m. expecting answers, has “suffered or permitted” that work — and the time must be paid.

Two consequences follow. First, a policy saying “no unauthorized overtime” is not a defense: the employer can discipline the worker for breaking the rule, but it still must pay for hours it knew were worked. Second, unrecorded hours count toward the 40-hour overtime threshold, so off-the-clock time frequently converts into unpaid overtime, with the FLSA's liquidated-damages doubler on top. That is why off-the-clock claims sit at the center of so many wage and hour class actions and are a core form of wage theft.

Where Off-the-Clock Work Happens

The same fact patterns recur across industries:

  1. Pre-shift preparation. Booting up computers and loading software before clocking in, prepping a station, stocking, or attending “pre-shift huddles” that start before the time clock does.
  2. Post-shift closing duties. Cleaning, counting drawers, locking up, or finishing paperwork after the punch-out — the pattern in Troester v. Starbucks, below.
  3. Security and health screenings. Waiting in line for bag checks, metal detectors, or health screenings — compensable in some states even where federal law says otherwise.
  4. Working through unpaid meal breaks. Auto-deduct systems that subtract a 30-minute lunch every shift whether or not the worker actually got one are a classic class-action generator.
  5. After-hours calls, texts, and emails. Nonexempt employees answering work messages at home are working; scattered minutes add up across a workweek.
  6. Remote-work creep. With home offices, the line between on and off duty blurs — logging in early, staying late, or handling tasks outside recorded hours that the employer can see in its own systems.
A live example of pre-shift time turning into money: Amazon's $3 million Pennsylvania settlement resolving claims that hourly workers were not paid for time spent in pre-shift COVID-19 screenings — claims the company resolved without admitting wrongdoing.

Security Screenings — Federal vs. State Law

Screening time is where federal and state law split most visibly. In Integrity Staffing Solutions v. Busk (2014), the U.S. Supreme Court held that warehouse workers' time in post-shift anti-theft security screenings was not compensable under the FLSA, because the screenings were not “integral and indispensable” to the workers' principal activities — the test that also governs donning and doffing claims under the Portal-to-Portal Act.

State law can come out the other way. In Frlekin v. Apple (2020), the California Supreme Court held that time retail employees spent in mandatory exit searches of bags and devices was compensable “hours worked” under California law, because the workers remained under the employer's control. The lesson generalizes: California and several other states define compensable time more broadly than the FLSA, so the same screening line can be unpaid under federal law and paid under state law. Which claims a case pleads — and where — often decides its value.

Continuous Workday and De Minimis

Two doctrines shape how far a paid day stretches. Under the continuous workday doctrine, once an employee performs their first principal activity of the day, the workday has started — and everything from that point until the last principal activity is generally compensable, including walking and waiting time in between. Start the clock early (say, with a compensable gear-up task) and the whole chain that follows must be paid.

Pulling the other direction is the federal de minimis doctrine, which lets employers disregard truly trivial slivers of time that are administratively impractical to record. Its scope is narrow — and in California, close to nonexistent for recurring time. In Troester v. Starbucks (2018), the California Supreme Court held that the federal de minimis rule does not apply to California wage claims for regularly occurring minutes: a closing shift supervisor's four to ten minutes of post-clock-out tasks each shift had to be paid. A few minutes a day is roughly an hour every couple of weeks — real money at scale, and modern timekeeping technology makes the “too hard to track” rationale increasingly hard to sustain. The same logic drives claims over time clock rounding.

Proving Unrecorded Hours — Mt. Clemens

The obvious objection to an off-the-clock claim is proof: if the time was never recorded, how can anyone know how much there was? The Supreme Court answered that in Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery Co. (1946). Because the FLSA puts the recordkeeping duty on the employer, an employer whose records are inaccurate or incomplete cannot benefit from its own failure. The employee needs only to show they performed work that was improperly compensated and produce enough evidence to estimate the amount “as a matter of just and reasonable inference” — through testimony, schedules, badge swipes, login and delivery data, texts, and similar evidence. The burden then shifts to the employer to rebut the inference with precise evidence of its own.

In practice, this burden-shifting framework is what makes off-the-clock cases winnable, and it is also why plaintiffs' lawyers look hard at the gap between what an employer's electronic systems recorded (register logins, alarm codes, phone records) and what its payroll actually paid.

How These Become Class Actions

A single worker's shaved minutes rarely justify a lawsuit; the same shaved minutes across an entire workforce do. Off-the-clock cases scale when the unpaid time flows from a common policy or system — an auto-deduct meal-break setting, a boot-up-before-login requirement, a mandatory screening line, a chain-wide closing procedure performed after punch-out. Federal claims proceed as opt-in FLSA collective actions, state claims as opt-out Rule 23 classes, and many cases run both tracks at once.

Settlements in this space typically pay workers a pro rata share weighted by weeks worked. Alongside the Amazon Pennsylvania screening-time deal noted above, OCA's coverage includes restaurant wage settlements like Le Pain Quotidien's $2.3 million New York settlement and FLSA overtime deals like the Store Space Self Storage manager settlement — all resolving claims without admissions of wrongdoing.

Frequently Asked Questions

What counts as off-the-clock work?

Any work performed that is not recorded or paid: setting up before a shift, closing duties after clocking out, working through an unpaid meal break, prep or paperwork done at home, and answering work calls, texts, or emails after hours. Under the FLSA's "suffer or permit to work" standard, if the employer knows or has reason to know the work is being done, it must be paid — even if it was never requested or authorized.

Does my employer have to pay for work it never authorized?

Generally yes, if it knew or should have known the work was happening. The FLSA defines "employ" as to "suffer or permit to work," so an employer cannot accept the benefit of work while refusing to pay for it merely because it was unauthorized. An employer can discipline an employee for working unapproved hours, but it still has to pay for the hours actually worked that it knew about.

Is time spent in security screenings paid?

Under federal law, usually not. In Integrity Staffing Solutions v. Busk (2014), the U.S. Supreme Court held that post-shift anti-theft security screenings were not compensable under the FLSA because they were not integral and indispensable to the workers' principal activities. But state law can differ: in Frlekin v. Apple (2020), the California Supreme Court held that time spent in mandatory bag and device checks is compensable "hours worked" under California law. Which law applies can decide the case.

What is the de minimis doctrine?

A federal doctrine that lets employers disregard truly trivial, administratively hard-to-track slivers of time. Its scope is narrow, and California has largely rejected it: in Troester v. Starbucks (2018), the California Supreme Court held that regularly occurring minutes of off-the-clock work — like a few minutes of closing tasks every shift — must be paid under California law.

How can I prove hours my employer never recorded?

The law eases the burden when the employer's records are missing or inaccurate. Under Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery (1946), if an employee shows they performed work that was improperly recorded or unpaid, they can estimate their hours by "just and reasonable inference" — through testimony, schedules, badge or login data, texts, and similar evidence — and the burden shifts to the employer to rebut the estimate. Employers, not workers, are legally responsible for keeping accurate time records.

Related Terms

About This Page

General legal-information about off-the-clock work, not legal advice. OpenClassActions.com is a consumer news site and is not a law firm or a settlement administrator. Whether particular time is compensable depends on the specific facts, the state, and the job, and the case law in this area continues to develop. For the controlling federal rules, see the Fair Labor Standards Act and the U.S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division. If you think you worked unpaid hours, consult a qualified employment attorney in your jurisdiction.

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