"How many hours a day can you work?" sounds like a question with one answer, but in practice it involves several different numbers: the regular workday, the cap including overtime, the weekly limit and the rest between days. This guide sorts out all the numbers in the Hours of Work and Rest Law, 1951, and the general permit under which most of the economy operates.

The regular workday: 8.6 hours

Since the work week was shortened across the economy (the 2018 extension order), a full work week is 42 hours:

• 5-day work week — a regular workday of 8.6 hours (8 hours and 36 minutes). In practice, one shorter day a week is common.
• 6-day work week — a regular workday of 8 hours Sunday to Thursday, and a shorter day on the eve of the weekly rest day.

Every hour beyond the regular day is an overtime hour — even if the employee hasn't completed the weekly quota. The calculation is both daily and weekly, and whichever threshold is crossed first is the one that triggers the premium.

The cap: up to 12 hours a day and 16 overtime hours a week

The general permit for overtime work, which covers most of the economy, sets two caps:

• Up to 12 working hours a day, including overtime.
• Up to 16 overtime hours a week — that is, a maximum of 58 hours a week.

The overtime premium is 125% for the first two hours each day and 150% from the third hour on. We cover the tiers, and Shabbat and holiday rates, in the article Overtime and Shabbat and holiday rates — and you can check a full calculation with the overtime calculator.

Rest between one workday and the next

There must be a break of at least 8 hours between one workday and the next. An employee who finished a shift at 23:00 can't, by law, start the next shift before 07:00 — a point often forgotten in tight shift schedules.

Weekly rest: 36 consecutive hours

Every employee is entitled to weekly rest of at least 36 consecutive hours. For a Jewish employee it includes Shabbat; a non-Jewish employee chooses between Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Employment during the weekly rest is prohibited without a special permit, and anyone lawfully employed during it is entitled to a rate of at least 150% and to substitute rest.

Night work: a 7-hour day

Night work is a workday with at least two hours between 22:00 and 06:00. For night work, the regular workday is shortened to 7 hours — every hour beyond that is overtime — and an employee may not be put on night work for more than one week out of every two.

Summary table

• Regular workday (5-day week) — 8.6 hours
• Regular workday (6-day week) — 8 hours
• Night workday — 7 hours
• Full work week — 42 hours
• Daily maximum including overtime — 12 hours
• Weekly overtime maximum — 16 hours
• Rest between workdays — 8 hours
• Weekly rest — 36 consecutive hours

So who keeps count of all this?

These limits require daily and weekly tracking for each employee separately — when they crossed 8.6 hours, how much overtime they've built up this week, and whether 8 hours were kept between shifts. Under Amendment 24 to the Wage Protection Law, an employer who doesn't keep proper records also bears the burden of proof in a dispute with the employee. That's exactly why businesses move from manual records to a system that counts all this automatically and alerts before a breach — not after it.

The full picture — who the law covers, breaks, weekly rest, night work, record-keeping and enforcement — is in our guide Israel’s Hours of Work and Rest Law: what every employer must know.

The information in this article is general and is not legal or tax advice. Collective agreements, industry extension orders and personal agreements may set different, sometimes more favorable, arrangements, and the rules themselves change from time to time. For any specific question, we recommend consulting a lawyer who specializes in labor law or an accountant.