Police shift differential

Typical Police officer differentials

Ranges are the lowest and highest figures in the linked contracts, statutes and employer postings, not averages; your employer's rate is set by its own contract or policy. Figures reported only on Indeed or Reddit are described in the text as self-reported and never used in this table.

Price your own week

Preloaded with the national median wage and a mid-range differential from the table; change any field.

How overtime works for police officers

Police departments may pay under the FLSA section 7(k) work period: 29 CFR 553.230 sets the law enforcement threshold at 171 hours in 28 days, 86 in 14 (DOL Fact Sheet #8) and 43 in 7, instead of 40 hours in a workweek. Most contracts are more generous than the floor and pay time and a half for hours beyond the scheduled shift, but the statute only requires overtime past the period threshold. Whatever the trigger, the overtime rate is computed on the regular rate including any night differential (29 CFR 778.207(b)); a contract clause that excludes the differential from overtime cannot take FLSA-covered officers below that floor. Federal officers on the General Schedule get 10% night pay added on top of overtime rather than blended into it.

Four ways departments pay for nights

Police night pay is set by the MOU or CBA and comes in four shapes. Percentage of base: San Francisco's POA MOU pays six and one-quarter percent for hours between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m., Sonoma County's DSA MOU pays an additional 5% per hour for work after 2 p.m., and federal officers get 10% under OPM's General Schedule rules. Flat dollars: Phoenix's PLEA MOU pays $2.00 an hour for nights and $1.00 an hour for weekend shifts, and the Nebraska State Patrol pays $1.00 an hour for nights.

Annual stipends: Houston's HPOU contract pays shift differential as $2,600 a year and weekend pay as another $2,600 a year, which is roughly $1.25 an hour each on a 2,080-hour year. None: Chicago's FOP Lodge 7 contract has no shift differential and pays a duty-availability allowance instead. A widely repeated figure for the NYPD could not be traced to a primary source, so it is not on this page.

On the BLS median of $36.64, Phoenix's $2.00 is 5.5% and San Francisco's 6.25% is $2.29, so the percentage and flat models land in the same place today; the difference is that the percentage grows with each step increase. Weekend premiums beyond Phoenix's $1.00 and Houston's stipend are rare in the contracts we read.

Holidays and overtime beyond the shift

Seattle's SPOG contract pays time and a half for hours worked on a holiday. Chicago gives compensatory time instead, 8 hours plus 4. Federal officers get double time. Whether your department pays a premium, banks comp time or does both is in the holiday article of the contract, and on a rotating schedule that works half the holidays it adds up.

Court time, call-backs and extended shifts are where police overtime actually comes from, and most contracts pay them at time and a half from the first extra hour even though section 7(k) would allow the department to wait until 171 hours in the period. The regular rate for that overtime must include the night differential; on Phoenix's $2.00 across a 40-hour week that lifts the overtime rate by $3.00.

Negotiating and checking your paystub

Where police paystubs and MOUs diverge.

• —Read the window: San Francisco's differential pays hour-by-hour between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m.; Sonoma's starts at 2 p.m.; a majority-of-shift rule pays the whole shift.
• —Check whether your contract pays overtime from the end of the shift or only past the 7(k) threshold; the first is a contract benefit, the second is the legal floor.
• —If the overtime rate on the stub equals exactly 1.5× base in a week with night pay, the differential was excluded, and the FLSA does not allow that for covered officers.
• —Annual stipends (Houston's model) are not visible per hour; ask how they are treated in the overtime regular rate.

FAQ

Sources

1. BLS OES Police and Sheriff's Patrol Officers (33-3051), May 2025 national median
2. San Francisco POA MOU 2023–26, paragraph 257
3. Phoenix / PLEA (Unit 4) MOU 2024–26, section 3-11
4. Sonoma County DSA MOU 2023–26, shift differential premium
5. Houston / HPOU 2025 contract overview
6. Nebraska State Patrol: become a trooper
7. Chicago / FOP Lodge 7 CBA 2017–27
8. Seattle / SPOG CBA 2024–27, section 8.3
9. OPM: night pay for General Schedule employees
10. OPM: holidays, work schedules and pay
11. 29 CFR 553.230: section 7(k) work periods
12. DOL Fact Sheet #8: police and firefighters
13. 29 CFR 778.207: shift differentials in the regular rate

BLS medians are the May 2025 national OES estimates. Contract figures are as written in the linked agreements on the date above; check the current agreement for your employer. Last reviewed 2026-08-27.