Rotating Shift Schedule Generator

The five rotation patterns, and why they all land on 42 hours

Five of the most common continuous-coverage rotations arrive at the same weekly average by completely different routes. Here is every one of them, with the cycle math checked against the pattern string the generator actually uses.

Cycle math for each preset in the generator above

Pattern	Cycle	Shift	Shifts / cycle	Hours / cycle	Avg h/wk	Weekly hours seen	OT avg h/wk
2-2-3 / Pitman / Panama	14 days	12 h	7	84	42.00	24, 36, 48, 60	4 or 10 (anchor)
Panama rotating	14 days (56-day flip)	12 h	7	84	42.00	24, 36, 48, 60	4 or 10 (anchor)
DuPont	28 days	12 h	14	168	42.00	0, 48, 72	12
4-on-4-off	8 days	12 h	4	48	42.00	36, 48	4
Continental 8h	8 days	8 h	6	48	42.00	40, 48	2

All five land on exactly 42.00 hours a week, a 5 percent hours premium over a 40-hour week before overtime is counted at all. Annualized, 42 hours a week is 2,191.5 hours a year (42 times 365.25 divided by 7) against 2,087 for a standard 40-hour full-time year. The annual work hours calculator works that figure the other way round.

The average is the least interesting number on the page. What separates these patterns is how the hours clump, and clumping is what determines overtime. DuPont stacks them into a 72-hour week and a zero-hour week. 4-on-4-off spreads them so no week ever exceeds 48. Both patterns work out to the same annual hours, but the overtime and the fatigue are nothing alike.

The 2-2-3 skeleton also travels under several names. Pitman dominates in police and fire, Panama in manufacturing, and 2-3-2 is the same 14-day block set in a different order. Reordering the blocks still yields 7 workdays in 14 days, so the 42-hour average is identical for every arrangement. Panama rotating adds one thing only: crews swap between days and nights every 28 days, so the full pattern repeats every 56 days. The marker on the calendar flips, the hours do not.

Continental is the name nobody agrees on. Some sources describe an 8-day cycle, some a 28-day one, some 8-hour shifts and some 12. This generator uses a declared definition so the numbers are reproducible: an 8-day cycle of 2 mornings, 2 afternoons, 2 nights, 2 off, with 8-hour shifts and 4 crews at offsets of 0, 2, 4, and 6 days. Check the name against your own posted schedule before assuming it matches.

How the workweek start day changes your overtime on a 2-2-3

Most schedule generators print a calendar. Almost none of them ask which day your payroll workweek starts, and on a 2-2-3 that setting changes overtime pay by thousands of dollars a year.

A 2-2-3 crew works 7 shifts in every 14 days. That part is fixed. But a 7-day workweek can be laid over the 14-day pattern in 14 different places, and the shifts land unevenly. Take the default scenario loaded above: 12-hour shifts at $25.00 an hour, rotation starting on a Monday.

With a Sunday workweek, the first full week picks up cycle positions 7 through 13, which is 3 shifts, 36 hours. The second week picks up position 14 and positions 1 through 6, which is 4 shifts, 48 hours. That is 76 regular hours and 8 overtime hours, so 76 times $25.00 plus 8 times $37.50 comes to $2,200.00 per two weeks.

Move the workweek to Monday and nothing about the shifts changes. Week one is now positions 1 through 7: 5 shifts, 60 hours. Week two takes positions 8 through 14, just 2 shifts and 24 hours. Still 84 hours, still 7 shifts, but now 64 regular hours and 20 overtime hours: 64 times $25.00 plus 20 times $37.50 comes to $2,350.00. A $150.00 difference every two weeks, roughly $3,913 a year, out of one payroll setting.

Of the 14 possible positions the workweek can occupy, 10 produce the 48/36 split with 8 overtime hours and 4 produce the 60/24 split with 20. Employers overwhelmingly land on the 48/36 anchor. Workers rarely know it was a choice.

It is a lawful choice, within limits. Under 29 CFR 778.105 the employer may set the workweek to begin on any day and at any hour, it stays fixed once established, and it may be changed only if the change is intended to be permanent and is not designed to evade the overtime requirements of the Act. Different groups of employees can be on different workweeks. So ask HR: what day and hour does my workweek begin? Then set the anchor above to match, and read the comparison table to see what the other six would pay.

DuPont's shape is anchor-dependent too, but its 72-hour week produces heavy overtime under any reasonable anchor, so the setting matters far less there. On 4-on-4-off and Continental the spread is smaller again, because neither pattern can pack more than 4 or 6 shifts into any seven-day window.

Rotating shifts under the FLSA, including the 7(k) exemption

Federal overtime is a weekly rule. A workweek is a fixed and regularly recurring period of 168 consecutive hours, and each workweek stands alone: hours over 40 in that week are paid at one and a half times the regular rate. Averaging two weeks together is not permitted for ordinary employees, which is exactly why a 36-hour week paired with a 48-hour week pays 8 overtime hours instead of zero, even though the pair averages 42.

Public agency fire protection and law enforcement employees are the big exception, and they are also the workers most likely to be on a Pitman rotation in the first place. Section 7(k) of the FLSA lets a public agency establish a work period of 7 to 28 days instead of a 7-day workweek. Under 29 CFR 553.230, overtime then begins after 212 hours in a 28-day work period for fire protection employees and 171 hours for law enforcement employees, prorated for shorter periods. Run the arithmetic on a Pitman rotation: 14 shifts of 12 hours in 28 days is 168 hours, which is under 212 and under 171. The identical schedule that generates 8 overtime hours every two weeks for a factory worker can generate none at all for a firefighter. This generator does not model 7(k) work periods.

Then there is the state layer, which this tool also does not model. It applies the federal weekly threshold of 40 hours and nothing else. California requires overtime after 8 hours in a day and double time after 12, which means every 12-hour rotation shift carries 4 hours of daily overtime before any weekly rule is reached. Alaska, Nevada, and Colorado have daily rules of their own. Check yours in the overtime rules by state reference before you trust a weekly-only figure.

Collective bargaining agreements override all of it in practice. Many rotating-shift workplaces are union shops where the contract sets overtime after 8 in a day or 12 in a shift, or pays a flat premium across the whole rotation. The contract governs. To price a single week from the rotation on its own terms, use the overtime calculator.

Reading the calendar and setting up your crew

Crew offsets are what make a rotation cover the clock. On a 2-2-3, the two day crews sit at offsets of 0 and 7 days and the two night crews sit at the same offsets. Offset 7 is the exact complement of offset 0 on this pattern, verified position by position, so on every calendar day exactly one day crew and one night crew are working and the other two are off. No gaps, no doubled coverage. DuPont uses offsets of 0, 7, 14, and 21 days across its 28-day cycle. Continental uses 0, 2, 4, and 6 across its 8-day cycle, which staffs mornings, afternoons, and nights while one crew rests.

In the calendar above, D marks a day shift, N a night shift, and M and A mark Continental mornings and afternoons. A dash means off. Each week block starts on your payroll workweek start day, and each crew row ends the block with that crew's hours for the week, badged when it crosses 40. If your rotation start date falls mid-week, the leading block is drawn as a partial week and left out of every total, because a partial week is not a workweek.

For 4-on-4-off and Continental, totals are reported over 56 days rather than per cycle, and that choice needs explaining. An 8-day cycle is not a whole number of payroll weeks, so per-cycle overtime does not exist as a quantity: each week the rotation lands one weekday later, and it takes 56 days, 8 weeks and 7 full cycles, before the two calendars agree again. That is the smallest window containing a whole number of both cycles and workweeks, so it is the only window where the weekly overtime pattern actually closes. For a 14-day cycle the repeat period is 14 days, and for DuPont's 28-day cycle it is 28 days.

What this tool leaves out is worth stating plainly. Hours are credited to the calendar day each shift starts, so a shift crossing midnight is not split between workweeks. Shift differentials are excluded from the gross pay figure, and a rotation onto nights usually earns one, which the shift differential calculator prices. Section 7(k) work periods are not modelled. State daily overtime is not modelled. If your week does not match any pattern here at all, enter the shifts one at a time in the work schedule hours counter, and if your employer runs a fixed compressed schedule rather than a rotation, the compressed work week calculator covers 4/10, 3/12, and 9/80.

Rotations are easy to mis-remember, so it helps to keep your own record of what you actually worked instead of what was posted. You can track your rotation shifts with TimeClock44 and compare your own totals against the calendar above.

Estimates only. This calculator is for general information and is not tax, payroll, or legal advice. Verify results against your posted schedule, your pay stub, your collective bargaining agreement, and applicable federal and state law.