Blended Hourly Rate Calculator
Mixing pay rates or billing rates? Enter as many hourly rates as you need with their hours to get one weighted average — your blended hourly rate. Works for FLSA overtime weeks, blended labor rates, consulting and legal bill rates, and onsite/offshore staffing blends.
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Enter only straight-time job rates — not an overtime rate. The blend is your FLSA regular rate, and the overtime premium owed is half of it.
Free Blended Hourly Rate Excel Template
The same math as a spreadsheet you keep: enter each role's hours and rate and it returns the blended regular rate, the half-time overtime premium, overtime hours and total gross pay, with 29 CFR 778.115 cited on the sheet.
The blended hourly rate formula
Each rate is weighted by the hours worked at it, so a rate covering 90 hours moves the blend far more than one covering 10. Total pay divided by total hours always equals the blended rate — a quick way to sanity-check any payroll or invoice.
Practical Industry Applications of Blended Hourly Rates
1. Dual-Rate Manufacturing & Warehouse Operations
When a technician splits shifts between precision CNC machining at $27.00/hr (28 hours) and general inventory stocking at $18.50/hr (16 hours), gross straight compensation equals $1,052.00 over 44 total hours. Dividing $1,052.00 by 44 yields a blended regular rate of $23.91/hr. Overtime for the 4 hours over 40 is paid with an additional half-time premium of $11.96/hr ($47.82), bringing total weekly compensation to $1,099.82.
2. Legal & Professional Services Retainers
Corporate clients frequently mandate a single capped billing rate for complex litigation. If a senior partner billing $520/hr logs 12 review hours while senior associates at $240/hr log 48 draft hours and paralegals at $90/hr log 60 document hours, total billings equal $23,160 across 120 engagement hours. The effective blended billing rate is $193.00/hr, enabling straightforward client invoices while protecting profitability.
3. Mixed-Tier Cloud & DevOps Engineering
Technology firms often deploy tiered support tiers under a single Master Services Agreement (MSA). Combining a principal cloud architect at $165/hr (25 hours) with core systems administrators at $65/hr (75 hours) yields $9,000 for 100 hours of monthly maintenance — an effective blended labor rate of $90.00/hr.
Learn more about blended hourly rates
- The ultimate guide to blended hourly & overtime rates — the full walkthrough.
- Blended overtime for two pay rates — the FLSA weighted-average method, step by step.
- FLSA regular rate rules — how bonuses and shift differentials factor in.
- How to calculate a blended rate for consulting — team, agency & onshore/offshore examples.
- Shift differential calculator — day, night and weekend premiums blended into the regular rate.
State rules that change the answer
This calculator computes the federal weighted average. Where state and federal overtime law both apply, the employee is entitled to the higher standard — so treat the figure above as a floor, not a final answer.
California
California adds daily overtime. Labor Code § 510(a) requires time-and-a-half after 8 hours in a workday and for the first 8 hours on the 7th consecutive day, and double time after 12 hours in a day and after 8 hours on that 7th day. A Californian can therefore be owed a premium in a 38-hour week, which this calculator would report as zero. California's DLSE applies the same weighted average for two or more rates and publishes this example: 32 hours at $11.00 plus 10 hours at $9.00 is $442 over 42 hours, a regular rate of $10.52. One divergence to watch: for a flat-sum bonus, California divides by the maximum legal regular hours rather than by total hours worked, which produces a higher figure than the federal method.
Massachusetts
Massachusetts overtime is 1.5 × the regular hourly rate over 40 hours in a week (454 CMR 27.03(3)); there is no daily overtime. But Massachusetts defines the regular hourly rate differently from the FLSA: 454 CMR 27.02 excludes "sums paid as commissions, drawing accounts, bonuses, or other incentive pay based on sales or production" — payments the FLSA includes. If your pay includes commissions or sales/production incentives, the state and federal figures diverge and which one governs is a legal question worth asking. Retail Sunday and holiday premium pay was fully phased out on 1 January 2023.
New York and New York City
New York adopts the federal method by reference — 12 NYCRR 142-2.2 requires 1.5 × the regular rate "in the manner and methods provided in and subject to the exemptions of sections 7 and 13" of the FLSA, so the weighted average applies. Two traps: residential employees reach overtime at 44 hours rather than 40, and minimum-wage and spread-of-hours amounts are tiered by region (New York City, Nassau/Suffolk/Westchester, and the rest of the state). There is no separate New York City overtime rate — NYC's Fair Workweek scheduling penalties are a different question.
Frequently asked questions
What is a blended hourly rate?
A blended hourly rate is the weighted average of two or more hourly rates, weighted by the hours worked or billed at each rate. It answers the question: if all these hours were paid at one single rate, what would that rate be?
How do I calculate a blended overtime rate?
Two different questions hide behind this one. If you want your effective earnings for a heavy-overtime week, enter your regular hours at your base rate and your overtime hours at the rate you were actually paid — the result is your average earnings per hour. But if you are computing overtime under the FLSA, do not enter an overtime rate at all: 29 CFR 778.115 builds the regular rate from "different nonovertime rates of pay," and 29 U.S.C. 207(e)(5) excludes the overtime premium from the regular rate entirely. Enter only your straight-time job rates. For someone on a single $25 base rate, the FLSA regular rate is $25.00 — not $27.50.
How is a blended rate used under the FLSA for two jobs?
When an employee works two different jobs at different rates for the same employer, the FLSA regular rate is the weighted average of those rates (29 CFR 778.115) — exactly what this calculator computes. The overtime premium still owed is one-HALF that blended rate for each hour over 40, not one-and-a-half: straight time has already been paid on every hour, including the overtime hours, so only the premium half remains. Example: 30 hours at $12 plus 20 hours at $18 is $720 of straight time over 50 hours, a blended regular rate of $14.40. The premium due is 10 × $7.20 = $72, for $792 total — the same figure you get from 40 × $14.40 + 10 × $21.60. Paying 1.5 × $14.40 × 10 on top of the $720 would total $936 and overpay by $144. A rate-in-effect alternative exists under 29 CFR 778.419, but only where the employee agreed in advance of performing the work and the conditions of 29 CFR 778.417 are met — confirm specifics with counsel.
How do professional agencies establish a blended billing rate?
Service firms calculate an all-in rate card by weighting each staff tier by projected scope allocation. Total anticipated fees across directors, specialists, and junior associates are summed and divided across aggregate contract hours, establishing a transparent unit price for master service agreements.
How does distributed staffing affect the blended hourly rate?
When integrating domestic project leads with remote delivery teams, the blended rate reflects your true cost basis per delivered hour. Input domestic supervision hours alongside remote production hours to evaluate real contract efficiency and vendor proposals accurately.
Blending interest rates instead?
The same weighted-average math applies to debt. Combine any number of loan balances and rates to find your true blended interest rate.