How Many Hours Is a 2-2-3 Schedule? (Per Week, Per Cycle, Per Year)

The cycle, counted

The 2-2-3 template is 14 days: on, on, off, off, on, on, on, then off, off, on, on, off, off, off. Count the ONs and you get 7 shifts per 14-day cycle. At 12 hours each, that's 84 hours — the number most job postings quote as an '84-hour biweekly'. Divide by two and you get the 42-hour weekly average; multiply by 26 cycles and you get 2184 hours a year, versus 2,080 on a standard 40-hour job.

No single week is 42 hours, though. The cycle splits into a three-shift week and a four-shift week — 36 and 48 hours — when the workweek boundary falls between the two halves of the template. The four-shift week is where overtime lives.

Per week: why the split depends on your workweek

The 36/48 split assumes the employer's seven-day workweek starts on a day that divides the cycle cleanly. It doesn't have to. The FLSA lets an employer fix any day as the start of the workweek, and if it lands so that a three-shift block and a two-shift block share one week, the same 84 hours arrive as a 60-hour week followed by a 24-hour week. Same schedule, same paycheck total at straight time — but 20 overtime hours in one week instead of 8.

Scanning every possible start day, the yearly overtime on a 12-hour 2-2-3 ranges from 208 hours (best alignment) to 520 hours (worst), with 26 weeks over 40 either way. Employers know this, which is why some choose a workweek start that produces the calmer split. Ask payroll which day yours begins; it's on the first paystub's period dates.

8-, 10- and 12-hour variants

The 2-2-3 template is almost always run on 12-hour shifts, because seven shifts in fourteen days only covers the clock with four crews if each shift is half a day. A few sites run the same on/off template on 8- or 10-hour shifts for staffing that doesn't need round-the-clock coverage. The hours change, the rhythm doesn't:

Per year, and what gets paid as overtime

Under the federal 40-hour weekly rule, every 48-hour week on twelves carries 8 overtime hours, and there are 26 of them in a year — 208 overtime hours, paid at 1.5× your regular rate including any night differential. The remaining 1976 hours are straight time. Some employers instead pay a salary or an 'annualized' hourly figure that already prices in the overtime; if yours does, check that the effective rate on the four-shift weeks still meets the FLSA minimum for overtime.

Unpaid meal breaks change the count. Many twelves are 12.5 hours on site with a 30-minute unpaid break, or 12 hours with 11.5 paid — in which case a four-shift week is 46 paid hours and carries 6 overtime hours, not 8. Your schedule's hours are whatever your paid hours are, not the length of the shift.

Per month

Months don't divide into 14-day cycles, so monthly hours wobble. The yearly average is 182 hours a month (2184 ÷ 12), but any given calendar month holds a different number of shifts depending on its length and where the cycle falls in it:

Compared with other rotations

Most four-crew 12-hour rotations land on the same weekly average, because covering 24 hours with four crews means each crew owns a quarter of the hours in the week. What differs is the shape of the stretches and how the overtime clusters:

See your month on a calendar

The 2-2-3 schedule page lays the cycle over any month, shows each week's hours and overtime for your workweek start, and exports an .ics you can drop into your phone. ShiftCheck's rotation autofill stamps the same pattern onto your pay calendar so each week's overtime and paycheck size show up before you work them.

FAQ