4 on, 3 off (4×10s) schedule

How the 4×10 schedule works

Four on, three off is a seven-day cycle of four 10-hour shifts followed by three consecutive days off. Because the cycle is a week, it is a personal schedule rather than a crew rotation: your four days are the same four days every week, and your three off are the same three. The classic version is Monday to Thursday with Friday to Sunday off; agencies that need seven-day coverage assign different people different four-day blocks.

Coverage on a 4×10 comes from overlap rather than rotation. A police department running 4×10s typically staggers start times and days off across squads so that Friday and Saturday nights, the busiest periods, have two squads on duty at once. The generator shows one person's week; set the start date to the first day of your block.

The shifts are usually 10 hours paid, with a meal break inside or outside them depending on the employer, and they may be fixed days, fixed evenings or fixed nights. Some agencies rotate the block itself every few months, so Monday to Thursday becomes Wednesday to Saturday, and everyone gets weekend days off in turn.

Hours, overtime, and what it pays

Four shifts of 10 hours is 40 hours in every workweek, whichever day the employer's week starts, because the cycle is exactly seven days. The table above therefore shows no weeks over 40 and no overtime at a 40-hour threshold: the 4×10 is the only pattern here, besides the 3×12, that never crosses the federal line on its own.

That does not make it overtime-free. Any extra shift, holdover or court appearance pushes the week over 40 and is paid at time and a half on your regular rate. Under the federal rule a 10-hour day is not itself overtime; under California's daily overtime rule it would be, unless the employer adopted an alternative workweek schedule through the required election, which is exactly what most 4×10 employers there have done. A few other states have daily rules for specific industries; check yours.

Police and sheriff's employees may be paid under an FLSA section 7(k) work period instead, with overtime above 171 hours per 28 days or a proportional figure. At 40 hours a week a 4×10 works 160 hours per 28 days, below that threshold, so contract overtime rules usually matter more than the FLSA on this schedule.

Who uses it and why

The 4×10 is the most common compressed workweek in US local government: police patrol, fire prevention and inspection staff, public works and utility crews, parks and refuse departments, and many city offices. In the private sector it is popular in construction and the trades, IT support, manufacturing that runs four long days, and with any employer offering a three-day weekend as a retention perk without changing total hours.

Workers like it for the obvious reason: a three-day weekend every week, and one fewer commute. Employers like the extra hours of daily coverage and the overlap it gives at peak times. The cost is a 10-hour day, which on a busy patrol shift or a job site can be tiring, and the fact that childcare and appointments have to fit around a longer day.

Pros and cons

The compressed week, for and against.

• —Pro: a three-day weekend every week, all year.
• —Pro: exactly 40 hours a week, so no overtime dispute and easy budgeting.
• —Pro: the same days every week; the calendar never drifts.
• —Con: 10-hour days, with everything else in life squeezed into the remaining hours.
• —Con: in states with daily overtime rules, it needs a formal alternative workweek agreement.
• —Con: the three days off may not be a weekend if coverage demands a mid-week block.

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