How do South Carolina wage, overtime and meal break laws work in 2026?
South Carolina has no state wage, overtime or break statute, so federal law governs every part. The minimum wage is the federal $7.25, and overtime is 1.5x after 40 hours in a week.
· South Carolina, United States guide
Illustration · Charleston, South Carolina
South Carolina is the simplest wage state to read and the easiest to get wrong by assuming it has rules it does not. There is no state minimum wage, no state overtime law, and no meal or rest break mandate. The US Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division fills every gap through the Fair Labor Standards Act.
So the figures are the federal ones: a $7.25 floor, overtime at 1.5 times pay after 40 hours in a week, and no daily overtime at all. The work is applying the FLSA correctly, because in South Carolina the FLSA is the whole rulebook. Compare how a neighbouring state handles the same rules: North Carolina wage and overtime law.
What is South Carolina's minimum wage in 2026?
South Carolina has no state minimum wage, so the federal floor of $7.25 an hour applies to covered employers in 2026. Tipped staff can be paid a cash wage of $2.13, with tips making up the rest.
Local governments cannot set their own rate either, so $7.25 is the floor in Charleston, Columbia and Greenville alike. The federal rate has not moved since 2009 and there is no automatic inflation adjustment.
Because the floor is the federal one, a tipped employee earns a $2.13 cash wage plus tips, and you must top up any shortfall so the worker clears $7.25 for the hour. If tips do not get them there, the difference is yours to cover, and that top-up is the figure most out-of-state employers forget to track. The FLSA makes no exceptions for small shortfalls.
South Carolina preempts local minimum-wage ordinances, so no city or county rate layers on top. Hire in Charleston, Columbia or Greenville and the floor is identical: $7.25. The risk is not the number; it is treating $7.25 as a ceiling when the real market rate for the role sits well above it. For how South Carolina handles what you withhold on top of gross pay, see South Carolina state income tax and unemployment insurance.
How does overtime work in South Carolina?
South Carolina has no state overtime law, so the federal FLSA governs in full: overtime is 1.5 times the regular rate after 40 hours in a single workweek. There is no daily overtime in South Carolina.
A worker can do four ten-hour days and be owed nothing extra, because only hours past 40 in the week count. The trigger is the weekly total, never the length of any one shift.
Your South Carolina employee clocks a fifth ten-hour day and you owe nothing extra, because only hours past 40 in the week trigger the 1.5x rate. The daily-overtime rule that appears in California and several other states does not exist here. South Carolina has no state overtime statute, so the FLSA at 29 U.S.C. § 207 is the only source.
The regular rate that the 1.5x multiplies is not just base pay. You fold in non-discretionary bonuses, shift premiums and commissions before you apply the multiplier, so your actual overtime outlay for a given week is often higher than the headline hourly rate suggests. Blending that rate correctly is where most South Carolina payroll errors land. For a state that does impose an additional overtime layer, compare North Carolina overtime rules or Georgia overtime rules.
Because there is no daily-overtime rule, compressed schedules are clean here: the only question is whether the week crosses 40 hours. The discipline is accurate weekly time records, because the burden of proving hours worked sits with you as employer if a claim is filed with the Wage and Hour Division.
What are South Carolina's meal and rest break rules?
South Carolina has no state meal or rest break law for adult workers or for minors. Breaks are entirely at the employer's discretion, and federal law sets only the pay rules for breaks an employer chooses to give.
Under federal rules, a short break of under twenty minutes is paid and counts as hours worked. A genuine meal period of thirty minutes or more can be unpaid, but only if the employee is fully relieved of duty.
South Carolina does not force you to schedule any break, but the moment you do, the FLSA pay treatment is not optional. A worker who answers the phone or covers a station through lunch is not relieved of duty, so that meal period is paid time and folds into the 40-hour overtime count. That reclassification is the break-related risk, not the absence of a state mandate.
For nursing mothers you must provide reasonable break time and a private space that is not a bathroom. That federal accommodation applies in South Carolina exactly as it does in every other state. For how leave rights more broadly sit alongside this, see South Carolina paid family and sick leave. Beyond that, a written break policy is worth having even though the state does not require one; it sets expectations and makes the paid-versus-unpaid line auditable if a claim reaches the Wage and Hour Division.
Who is exempt, and how does federal law apply?
Because South Carolina defers entirely to federal law, exemption follows the FLSA: executive, administrative and professional staff must be paid a salary of at least $684 a week, which is $35,568 a year, and meet the duties test.
There is no separate South Carolina salary threshold to track. The federal $684 weekly level and the duties test are the only bar, and where it is not met the worker is non-exempt and earns overtime.
The $684 weekly level is the figure restored after the 2024 federal increases were struck down nationwide, and it stays in force for 2026. Salary alone never closes the exemption question: the role also has to pass the executive, administrative or professional duties test under the FLSA overtime regulations. Misclassify a salaried worker who fails the duties test and every over-40-hour week becomes back-pay, with interest.
This is the through-line for a South Carolina hire: no state wage agency rule, no state break rule, no state overtime premium to manage, so the federal classification call carries the whole compliance load. Get the $35,568 threshold and the duties test right, and the rest of the wage-and-hour picture in South Carolina is genuinely thin. For the termination-side of a misclassified worker's exposure, see South Carolina termination law and at-will exceptions. The SC Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation enforces state payment-of-wages claims if an employer withholds earned wages.
How Teamed runs South Carolina wage and hour compliance
Teamed becomes your legal employer of record in South Carolina for $599 per employee per month flat. Zero FX mark-up. We run the timesheet-to-payslip path so federal overtime and the tip top-up are calculated correctly, every cycle. For the full picture of hiring anywhere in the US, start with hiring in the United States.
You set the schedule. Teamed applies the 40-hour federal overtime rule, tracks the $2.13 tipped top-up to $7.25, and flags exemption risk against the $684 salary test before it becomes back-pay. Everything runs on one platform.
Real HR and legal experts handle your South Carolina hires and know the figure that matters here: no state layer, so the FLSA is the whole calculation, the blended regular rate, the 40-hour week, and the $35,568 exemption bar. An actual person, not a chatbot or a pooled queue. Overtime and premium pay are computed and pass through at cost, itemised on every invoice. No setup fee, no exit fee.
Contractor onboarding, EOR payroll, and entity graduation all live on one platform: a South Carolina contractor who converts to W-2 keeps their record, and that same employee can graduate to your own US entity when the model no longer fits without switching systems. Use the Crossover Calculator to see the month the model flips, or the Employer Cost Calculator to see your full cost before you hire. EOR is the right model for South Carolina, until it isn't. See what is included in the flat $599 fee and what passes through at cost.
The South Carolina mistake we see most is assuming the state has its own rules to comply with. It does not. There is no state minimum wage, no state overtime, no break law. So employers either over-engineer for rules that do not exist, or they skip the federal calculation that does apply. The whole job is running the FLSA cleanly, and getting the blended overtime rate and the exemption test right is the half you pay us for.
Some states pile rule on rule. South Carolina wrote almost none.
No state minimum wage, no state overtime, no break law. The FLSA is the whole rulebook, and Teamed runs it every cycle.
Applying the federal calculation correctly is the half you pay us for. Zero FX. One platform. $599 flat.
