Working Hours and Overtime in Malaysia: 2026 Employer Guide

Malaysia’s statutory working week is 45 hours, reduced from 48 with effect from 1 January 2023 in Peninsular Malaysia and Labuan, and only from 1 May 2025 in Sabah and Sarawak. Whether you owe overtime pay on top of that depends on what the employee earns and what kind of work they do, and if they sit in Sabah or Sarawak it depends on which of three separate statutes governs them.

Written for payroll, HR and compliance owners at companies employing staff in Malaysia from outside it. The figures below are the statutory floor, with each one linked to the authority that sets it.

The working week, and the three limits inside it

Section 60A(1) of the Employment Act 1955 sets three limits at once, and most cost models only track two of them. An employee shall not be required to work more than eight hours in one day, in excess of a spreadover period of ten hours in one day, or more than 45 hours in one week.

The weekly figure was 48 until the Employment (Amendment) Act 2022 substituted “forty-five” for “forty-eight” wherever it appeared. The Department of Labour’s own guidance puts the change in force on 1 January 2023. Summaries still carrying 48 hours are more than three years stale.

The spreadover limit is the one that catches people. It measures the span from clock-in to clock-out, not the hours worked inside it, so a split shift with a long unpaid gap in the middle can sit comfortably under eight worked hours and under 45 for the week while breaching the ten-hour span. Split shifts in retail and hospitality, and support roles bridging two time zones, are where it shows up. Section 60A(1A) lets the Director General permit work beyond these limits on application, which is the route if a genuine operational need exists.

Eight hours a day is the general rule rather than an absolute one. A contract may provide for up to nine hours on some days where other days are shorter and the week still totals no more than 45. Shift work can exceed the daily and weekly figures provided the average over any three-week cycle stays at or below 45 hours. Separately, an employee cannot be required to work more than five consecutive hours without a break of at least thirty minutes.

Whether your employee gets the overtime premium at all

This is the part that decides your cost, and it is the part generic summaries flatten into a single rate. The 2022 amendment extended the Employment Act to every employee regardless of wages. It did not extend the overtime provisions to every employee.

Under the First Schedule as amended by the Employment (Amendment of First Schedule) Order 2022, an employee whose statutory wages exceed RM4,000 a month falls outside subsections 60(3), 60A(3), 60C(2A), 60D(3) and 60D(4) and section 60J. Those are the rest day premium, the overtime premium, the shift allowance, public holiday work pay and termination benefits. The Department of Labour states the position directly: employees earning above RM4,000 are not entitled to overtime, holiday or rest day pay, with occupational exceptions that survive regardless of what they earn.

Peninsular Malaysia and Labuan. Verified as of 29 September 2026 against the Employment Act 1955 and the Employment (Amendment of First Schedule) Order 2022, both published by the Department of Labour Peninsular Malaysia.

The threshold runs on statutory wages as defined in section 2, which is not basic salary. Classifying off the offer-letter number is how companies land on the wrong row. The protected occupations that keep the premiums at any wage level include employees engaged in manual labour, certain commercial vehicle workers, employees supervising manual workers, and specified vessel employees. Where a role is part manual and part not, it counts as manual labour only if the manual work takes up more than half the working time in the wage period.

So a company hiring two people at RM4,500 a month may owe the overtime premium to a supervisor who qualifies under the First Schedule by supervising manual workers, and have no statutory overtime obligation to a software developer. Both are still bound by the 45-hour week, because only the payment provisions are excluded by the threshold, never the hours limits themselves. Getting this backwards is expensive in either direction: unbudgeted liability on one side, an overtime line item the company never owed on the other. Where no statutory right exists, a contract or a collective agreement can still create one, and frequently does.

What overtime actually costs

For an employee who is entitled to it, the premium is not one multiplier. It changes with when the work happens, and the rest day rule is not a multiplier at all until the hours run past normal.

All figures from the Employment Act 1955. Verified as of 29 September 2026.

Overtime is capped. Regulation 2 of the Employment (Limitation of Overtime Work) Regulations 1980 sets the limit at a total of 104 hours in any one month. Roughly 24 hours a week on top of a 45-hour week, so it rarely binds an office function and routinely binds a production line clearing a backlog.

A worked rest day, priced

Take a monthly-rated employee on RM3,800 a month with an eight-hour normal day, so the overtime provisions apply. They work a full rest day and stay four hours beyond their normal hours.

Figures are calculated from unrounded rates and rounded only at the final total, so the two displayed amounts of RM146.15 sum to RM292.31 rather than RM292.30.

The two RM146.15 figures are not a duplication. One is the day’s-pay substitution the rest day rule triggers, the other the hourly multiplier that starts only once normal hours are passed. Four hours at double the hourly rate happens to equal one eight-hour day at the ordinary rate, which is why they look identical. Collapse them into a single multiplier and the answer is wrong either way: 2 times across the whole rest day overstates the cost, 1.5 times understates it. To model this across a headcount rather than one employee, the Malaysia labor cost calculator takes the employer-side contributions that sit on top of these figures.

The leave you owe, and from when

Peninsular Malaysia and Labuan, from the Employment Act 1955. Verified as of 29 September 2026.

The bands step at “five years or more”, not after five years, so an employee’s leave moves on their fifth anniversary rather than their sixth. A payroll calendar built once at onboarding is wrong by the employee’s third year and wrong again in the fifth. The 60-day hospitalisation allowance sits alongside the ordinary sick leave entitlement rather than inside it, so a long admission does not exhaust the 14, 18 or 22 days.

And the 98-day maternity leave right is not the same thing as the maternity allowance. The right to the leave and the entitlement to be paid for it run on separate conditions of service and timing, so budgeting every 98-day absence as automatically employer-paid will overstate the cost in some cases and understate the paperwork in all of them.

Section 60D(1) fixes five of the eleven public holidays: National Day, the Birthday of the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, the Birthday of the Ruler of the state (or Federal Territory Day where that applies), Workers’ Day and Malaysia Day. The remaining six are the employer’s to select from the gazetted list. Paternity leave under section 60FA goes to a married male employee with twelve months’ prior service, capped at five confinements whatever the number of spouses, and notice is given at least thirty days before the expected confinement or as early as possible after the birth.

Flexible working requests and the 60-day clock

Sections 60P and 60Q give an employee the right to apply in writing to vary their hours of work, days of work or place of work. The employer must approve or refuse the application within sixty days of receiving it, in writing, and a refusal has to state the grounds for it.

The sixty days run from receipt of the written application, not from the point it reaches someone with authority to decide, and nothing in the process generates a reminder. Specify a submission channel, and record the receipt date the moment an application lands.

Where this gets messy: Malaysia is three statutes

Every figure above is Peninsular Malaysia and Labuan. Section 1 of the Employment Act 1955 applies it to Peninsular Malaysia, and it was extended to the Federal Territory of Labuan from 1 November 2000. Sabah and Sarawak have their own Labour Ordinances, and they did not move with the 2023 amendments.

They moved more than two years later. The Labour Ordinance of Sarawak (Amendment) Act 2025 brought Sarawak’s section 105 from forty-eight hours to forty-five, raised maternity leave to not less than 98 consecutive days, introduced seven consecutive days of paternity leave, and took the gazetted public holiday count from sixteen to eighteen by adding Malaysia Day and Sarawak Independence Day. The commencement notification appointed 1 May 2025, with Part IVA excepted. Sabah’s equivalent amendment took effect on the same date and on the same exception, by its own commencement notification, and raised Sabah’s gazetted public holidays from fourteen to fifteen and its compulsory count from four to five.

From 1 January 2023 to 30 April 2025, the 45-hour week did not apply in Sabah or Sarawak. Any summary published in that window stating that Malaysia has a 45-hour working week was wrong for an employee in Kota Kinabalu or Kuching, and a company that built a Borneo payroll off a Peninsular guide has been running two years of rosters and holiday entitlements against the wrong statute. Both Borneo regimes have been in force only since 1 May 2025, and plenty of published material has not caught up.

The wage threshold works the same way in all three regimes. Each ordinance now covers employees regardless of salary, past the previous RM2,500 ceiling in the Borneo states, but the applicable schedules still exclude employees above RM4,000 from the specified premiums. Sabah’s threshold sits in its Employment (Amendment of First Schedule) Order 2025, effective 1 May 2025, and Sarawak’s is confirmed by the Sarawak Labour Department. The occupational exceptions survive at any wage level in each regime.

How NNRoad supports this

The obligations on this page attach to whoever is the employer of record in Malaysia. Where NNRoad holds that role through its employer of record service in Malaysia, that means classifying each employee against the wage threshold and the protected occupations, applying the right statute for the state they sit in, calculating the premiums at the right tier, tracking leave bands against service anniversaries, and holding the sixty-day clock on flexible working requests.

Frequently asked questions

Is the working week in Malaysia 45 or 48 hours?

Forty-five. It has been 45 in Peninsular Malaysia and Labuan since 1 January 2023, and in Sabah and Sarawak since 1 May 2025.

Does an employee earning more than RM4,000 a month get overtime pay in Malaysia?

Not as a statutory right in Peninsular Malaysia and Labuan, unless they fall within a protected occupation such as qualifying manual labour. A contract or collective agreement can still grant it.

How many public holidays must a Malaysian employer give?

Peninsular Malaysia and Labuan require eleven, including five compulsory. Sabah requires fifteen, including five compulsory. Sarawak requires eighteen, including six compulsory.

What is the maximum overtime an employee can work in Malaysia?

In Peninsular Malaysia and Labuan, a total of 104 hours in any one month, set by regulation 2 of the Employment (Limitation of Overtime Work) Regulations 1980. The Sabah and Sarawak ordinances carry an equivalent cap under their own subsidiary legislation.

Does the Employment Act 1955 apply in Sabah and Sarawak?

No. Each has its own Labour Ordinance, and both were amended separately with effect from 1 May 2025.