A swing shift is the work shift between the day shift and the night shift, usually running from 3 or 4 PM until 11 PM or midnight. In workplaces that number their shifts, the same block is called the second shift.
The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) doesn’t require extra pay for working it. If your employer does pay a second shift differential and you’re eligible for overtime, the differential has to be included when your overtime is calculated.
What is a swing shift?
Swing shift is the shift between the day and night shifts, and is similarly defined by Merriam-Webster and Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries. The latter marks it as North American English and gives the hours as 3 or 4 PM until 11 PM or midnight.
Swing shift and second shift usually mean the same hours. “Second shift” is the numbered name for the evening block in operations that run a first, second, and third shift, and in a two-shift operation it’s the later of the two.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) calls the same block the evening shift, so the BLS figures in this article use that term. Swing shift and second shift part ways only in the dictionary’s second meaning of swing shift, a relief crew, covered in its own section below.
Swing shift hours
Taken together, the dictionary definitions describe blocks like 3 PM to 11 PM and 4 PM to midnight. Two federal agencies define the evening block more precisely, and both use a majority-of-hours rule.
BLS counts a schedule as an evening shift when most of the working time falls between 2 PM and midnight. Its daytime schedule is the same test applied to 6 AM to 6 PM. The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) uses a 3 PM to midnight window for the second shift of federal wage employees, based on where most of their regularly scheduled, non-overtime hours fall.
OPM also defines the majority: a number of whole hours greater than half the shift, with meal breaks counted. On an 8-hour shift, that’s 5 hours.
A 1 PM–9 PM schedule is a second shift under OPM’s rule, because 6 of its 8 hours fall after 3 PM. OPM’s own fact sheet uses a shift that starts even earlier: 11:30 AM to 8 PM with a 30-minute meal break still counts as second shift, since 5 of its 8.5 hours fall inside the window.
Swing shift vs. second shift vs. graveyard shift
| Shift | Also called | Hours |
| Day shift | First shift | Most hours between 6 AM and 6 PM (BLS) |
| Swing shift | Second shift, evening shift | 3 or 4 PM to 11 PM or midnight; formally, most hours between 2 PM and midnight (BLS) or 3 PM and midnight (OPM) |
| Graveyard shift | Third shift, night shift | Around 11 PM to 7 AM |
The other meaning of swing shift: relief crews and rotating schedules
Merriam-Webster’s second sense of swing shift is a crew. In a factory that runs seven days a week, the swing shift is a group of workers who work as needed so the regular shift workers can have one or more days off each week. The name describes the crew’s role: it covers for whichever regular crew is off.
If a job listing says “swing shift” but describes hours or workdays that change, ask the employer which meaning they use. It could be a relief role like this one, or what BLS calls a rotating shift: hours that change periodically from days to evenings or nights. Our guide to shift patterns walks through schedules built for 24/7 operations.
For seven-day operations that cycle work days and rest days at fixed hours, WebWork’s shift scheduling has a Rotating shift type. You set the number of work days and rest days, for example 4 on and 3 off, along with one start time, end time, and required hours. The cycle repeats until the repeat-until date, if you set one, and every work day in it uses the same hours.
Swing shift pay and second shift differential
Is a second shift differential required?
The FLSA doesn’t require one: the Department of Labor says extra pay for night or weekend work is a matter of agreement between employer and employee, and the premium the FLSA does require is overtime at time and a half. Whether a swing shift pays more depends on your employer’s policy or, in a union workplace, the collective agreement.
What federal wage employees get
OPM’s Federal Wage System covers the federal government’s blue-collar employees paid by the hour, in trade, craft, and labor jobs. Under its night shift differential rules, they get 7.5% when the majority of their regularly scheduled, non-overtime hours fall between 3 PM and midnight, and 10% when the majority fall between 11 PM and 8 AM. Once a shift meets the majority test, the differential applies to every hour of it.
General Schedule employees have a separate rule: a 10% night pay differential for regularly scheduled work between 6 PM and 6 AM, paid on the hours worked in that window. On a 3 PM–11 PM shift, that covers the five hours after 6 PM. Neither rule applies to private employers.
What private employers pay
CompTool’s 2025 Shift Differential Best Practices study surveyed 227 organizations, nearly half of them in manufacturing (25%) or healthcare (22%). Its figures describe that sample and aren’t a national average.
Roughly 80% of the organizations paid a premium for weekday second shifts. The median cash premium was $1.00 an hour, and the middle half of cash-paying employers paid between $1.00 and $2.00. Employers that paid a percentage had a median of 110% of base pay, which is 10% on top. About 62% paid the second shift differential as flat cash and 35% as a percentage.
How a second shift differential changes overtime
For non-exempt employees, the FLSA calculates overtime from the regular rate, which includes all pay for employment except certain payments the Act excludes, such as expense reimbursements and discretionary bonuses (DOL Fact Sheet #23). Shift differentials stay in. 29 CFR 778.207(b) names night-shift differentials, paid as a percentage of base or as cents per hour, as premiums that must go into the regular rate before overtime is computed. A second shift differential is the same kind of premium.
To find the regular rate, the DOL divides total pay for the workweek, minus those exclusions, by the total hours actually worked. Say your base rate is $20 an hour, your employer pays a 10% second shift differential (2 an hour), and you work 45 hours in one week, all on second shift.
- Straight-time pay: 45 hours × $22 = $990
- Regular rate: $990 ÷ 45 hours = $22
- Overtime premium: 5 overtime hours × $11 (half the regular rate) = $55
- Total pay for the week: $990 + $55 = $1,045
If payroll pays overtime at 1.5 times the $20 base and leaves the differential off the overtime hours, the week comes to 40 × $22 + 5 × $30 = $1,030. Each overtime hour pays $30 instead of $33, and the paycheck is $15 short.
Who works swing shifts
The newest BLS figures, released September 24, 2026 and covering 2024–25, show that 5% of wage and salary workers usually worked an evening shift. That’s about 8 million people (Table 8).
Leisure and hospitality stands out: 20.3% of its workers were on evening shifts, compared with 8.1% in wholesale and retail trade, 6.4% in transportation and utilities, and 3.4% in manufacturing (Table 7). By occupation, the highest shares were in service jobs (13.8%), transportation and material moving (9.8%), and sales (8.3%).
Evening shifts were also more common among part-time workers, at 12.3% compared with 3.2% of full-time workers, and among workers aged 15 to 24, at 12.9%.
When BLS asked evening-shift workers for their main reason, personal preference came first (26.9%), followed by the nature of the job (23.0%) and time for school or another job (18.9%). Another 14.8% cited better arrangements for family, 9.4% couldn’t get another shift, and 6.3% named better pay. Among evening-shift workers, 25.2% of women gave family arrangements as the main reason, compared with 7.2% of men.
How to set up a second shift
If you manage the schedule, these four steps decide whether second shift pay comes out right.
1. Write down the shift window
Define second shift by a window and a majority rule, for example “most scheduled hours between 3 PM and midnight.” Say whether meal breaks count toward the majority, the way OPM counts breaks of an hour or less.
2. Choose how the differential applies
You can pay it on the whole shift once the majority test is met, as the Federal Wage System does, or only on the hours inside the window, as General Schedule night pay does. With a 3 PM–midnight window, a 1 PM–9 PM shift earns the differential on all 8 hours under the first approach and on 6 under the second. Whichever you pick, apply it the same way to everyone.
3. Include the differential in overtime
Each week, calculate the regular rate with the differential included, as in the example above, and pay overtime at 1.5 times that rate.
4. Record actual start and end times
The differential follows the hours people actually worked, so payroll needs actual start and end times next to the schedule. Under an hours-in-window rule, for example, an hour worked before 3 PM earns no premium.
In WebWork, the workspace Owner and Executive Managers create shifts in Employee Scheduling, available on the Plus and Premium plans. For a second shift whose hours differ by day, use the Custom shift type: choose the working days, then set a start time, end time, and required hours for each. For example, Monday to Thursday can run 3 PM–11 PM with 8 required hours, and Friday 3 PM–9 PM with 6.
Once members are assigned, Attendance Monitoring flags late starts, early finishes, and absences against the shift and asks the employee for a reason when they start late or finish early. Its reports show worked versus expected hours and shift compliance, and the overtime tracker separates regular hours from overtime.
That gives your payroll a record of when each hour was worked against each person’s assigned shift, which is what you need to apply the differential to the right hours. Payroll reports export those tracked hours through our Deel integration or in formats compatible with Gusto, Wise, PayPal, and Payoneer.
If you want to try this with your own second shift, you can start a free 14-day trial, no credit card required.
Before you start a swing shift
If you’re weighing a swing shift job, ask two questions before you accept: which hours count as second shift, and how the differential is paid. If you’re the manager, put the same two answers in your written policy before the first schedule goes out.
Want to see how a Custom second shift and its attendance reports would look with your team’s hours? Book a demo and we’ll walk you through it.
