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Working time rules in Norway: a guide for employers
Nine hours and forty, three sets of overtime limits depending on what the employer has agreed, and one absolute ceiling no agreement can lift. Plus why a fixed salary does not exempt anyone from the hours record.
Norwegian working time comes down to a handful of numbers, and the tables below cover all of them: the daily and weekly hour caps, the absolute ceiling, and the minimum overtime supplement.
The ceiling is fixed — no agreement, however willing both sides, can lift it. The overtime supplement is the number most often paid wrong.
Everything below follows chapter 10 of the Working Environment Act (arbeidsmiljøloven).
TL;DR
- Ordinary working hours are capped at nine hours in 24 hours and 40 hours in seven days.
- The overtime supplement is at least 40 per cent on top of ordinary pay.
- Employers owe employees 11 hours of daily rest and 35 hours of weekly rest.
- Employers must record every employee’s hours, and a fixed salary is not an exemption.
- A written employment contract is due no later than seven days after work starts.
How many hours can an employer require in a day or a week?
Ordinary working hours may not exceed nine hours in 24 hours and 40 hours in seven days (section 10-4).
That is the frame for work that does not count as overtime. Anything beyond it either needs an averaging agreement or is overtime, with the supplement that goes with it.
Two reduced limits sit in the same provision and are worth knowing before quoting 40 for everyone:
| Work | Weekly limit | Provision |
|---|---|---|
| Ordinary work | 40 hours | s. 10-4 (1) |
| Continuous shift work, comparable rotation, regular Sunday work, mainly night work | 38 hours | s. 10-4 (4) |
| Round-the-clock shift work, and work underground in mines or tunnelling | 36 hours | s. 10-4 (5) |
The 37.5-hour week common in Norwegian white-collar workplaces is a collective agreement figure, not a statutory one. The Act’s reduced numbers are 38 and 36.
Next: if the undertaking runs shifts, check which of the three limits its rosters are actually built against.
Overtime or additional work?
These are different things and the difference decides the money.
Overtime is work the employer requires beyond ordinary working hours, for a particular and time-limited need (section 10-6, first and second paragraphs).
Additional work is extra hours a part-timer works beyond their agreed percentage of full time, but still inside what would be ordinary working hours for a full-timer in the same role.
The test is whether the hours cross the 9/40 line, not whether they exceed the individual’s agreed percentage of full time. Genuine overtime triggers the statutory supplement; additional work does not, unless a collective agreement says so.
Next: paying every extra hour a part-timer works as overtime is expensive and unnecessary. Refusing to pay a full-timer who has crossed 9/40 is worse.
How much overtime is permitted?
Three tiers, depending on what has been agreed, plus a ceiling that applies whatever the tier.
| Basis | 7 days | 4 weeks | 26 / 52 weeks | Provision |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Without an agreement | 10 h | 25 h | 200 h / 52 weeks | s. 10-6 (4) |
| Written agreement, tariff-bound undertaking | 20 h | 50 h | 300 h / 52 weeks | s. 10-6 (5) |
| Arbeidstilsynet dispensation | 25 h | — | 200 h / 26 weeks | s. 10-6 (6) |
| Absolute ceiling, whatever is agreed | 48 h / 7 days | — | 13 h / 24 h | s. 10-6 (8) |
Two things about that table.
The middle tier requires a written agreement with the employees’ elected representatives in an undertaking bound by a collective agreement (fifth paragraph). An undertaking with no collective agreement cannot get there by agreeing it individually with employees.
The third is a dispensation granted case by case by Arbeidstilsynet (sixth paragraph). It is quoted as though it were the standard rule surprisingly often. It is not.
And the last row is the one that matters most: total working time, ordinary hours and overtime combined, is capped under the eighth paragraph. No agreement can derogate from it.
Next: find out which tier the undertaking is actually on before budgeting a crunch period. Most undertakings assume the middle one and are on the first.
How much extra does the employer have to pay for overtime?
The supplement is at least 40 per cent on top of the pay for equivalent work in ordinary hours (section 10-6, eleventh paragraph).
A floor, not a ceiling. Collective agreements often give more: typically 50 or 100 per cent depending on the time of day or day of the week. The 40 per cent cannot be reduced by any agreement.
Next: check your payroll’s overtime multiplier against 40 per cent before assuming a collective-agreement rate applies automatically.
How much rest must the employer give between shifts and each week?
Section 10-8 sets minimum rest, alongside the hour limits above, not instead of them:
| Rest period | Minimum |
|---|---|
| Daily | 11 hours continuous |
| Weekly | 35 hours continuous |
A roster can satisfy the hour caps and still breach the rest requirement.
Next: check rosters against both rest periods separately from the hour caps, because passing one does not mean passing the other.
Does the employer have to record hours for salaried employees?
An overview showing how much each individual employee has worked must exist, and it must be available to Arbeidstilsynet and to the employees’ elected representatives — section 10-7 is short and unconditional on this.
The provision draws no distinction by form of pay. A fixed monthly salary does not remove the duty, because the point of the record is to demonstrate that the limits are being observed for that individual.
Two things section 10-7 does not contain, both of which circulate in guidance:
- No deadline for when the overview must be prepared.
- No retention period — the three-year figure often quoted is not in this provision.
An employer using either number should know where it came from, because it is not from here.
Next: the duty is to be able to show hours per individual on request. A team-level total does not satisfy it.
Which employees are exempt from the working-time rules?
The exemption sits in section 10-12, which places employees in a senior post (first paragraph) and a genuinely independent position (second paragraph) outside chapter 10 entirely, so outside the hour limits, the overtime supplement, and the record-keeping duty.
The word doing the work is independent. It requires genuine autonomy over how one’s own working time is arranged: deciding what to do, when and how, rather than executing a schedule someone else sets.
It does not follow from a job title, from seniority, from being salaried, or from having no fixed hours in the contract.
Applying it broadly is a common source of later disputes about unpaid overtime, because the assessment is made on the substance of the role after the fact, often by someone who no longer works for the employer.
Next: list everyone currently treated as exempt and write one sentence each on what they actually control. Anyone that sentence cannot be written for is the employer’s exposure.
Can hours be averaged over a longer period, and by when is a contract due?
Averaging lets ordinary working hours be distributed unevenly across an agreed period, provided the average stays inside the 9/40 limit. It requires an agreement: written with the individual employee, with the employees’ elected representatives in a tariff-bound undertaking, or in some cases a permission from Arbeidstilsynet. The absolute ceiling applies regardless; averaging is not a route around it.
And one deadline that belongs to a different chapter but bites at the same moment: for engagements lasting more than one month, a written employment contract must exist no later than seven days after work starts (section 14-5). The deadline used to be one month, and the old figure is still sitting in templates and internal routines, one of the easiest errors to put right.
Sunday work, work on public holidays and night work have separate and stricter rules that apply on top of everything above.
Next: flag any Sunday, holiday or night shifts in your rosters and check them against those separate rules before relying on the limits above alone.
How does Taito.ai help with this?
Taito.ai sets up the section 10-7 hours record and keeps it maintained person by person, so the overview it requires is a query rather than a reconstruction when someone asks for it.
Sources
- Arbeidstilsynet (n.d.) Arbeidstid.
- Lovdata (2005) Arbeidsmiljøloven, LOV-2005-06-17-62, chapter 10, sections 10-4, 10-6, 10-7, 10-8 and 10-12.
- Lovdata (2005) Arbeidsmiljøloven, LOV-2005-06-17-62, section 14-5.
Lovdata publishes no official English translation of arbeidsmiljøloven, so every rule here is paraphrased rather than quoted. The Act’s own terms are kept in Norwegian: alminnelig arbeidstid, merarbeid, tillitsvalgte, særlig uavhengig stilling.
Disclaimer
Taito.ai does not provide legal, tax or accounting advice. This article is general information about the law as it stood on the date above, not advice on your situation, and it is not a substitute for it. Rates and thresholds change. Check with a qualified adviser before acting on anything here.
