Working Hours and Overtime Rules in Egypt Explained
- September 8, 2026
- 3:18 pm
Getting working hours and overtime pay right is one of the most common compliance gaps for employers in Egypt — largely because the rules involve several interacting limits: daily hours, weekly hours, rest breaks, and premium pay rates. Here’s a clear breakdown of working hours Egypt law requires, and how overtime should actually be calculated.
This article is for general informational purposes and is not legal advice. Overtime premium rates in particular vary across legal commentary — confirm current rates with local counsel or the Ministry of Labor before running payroll calculations.
Standard Working Hours
Under Egyptian labor law, standard working hours are capped at:
•8 hours per day
•48 hours per week
These limits do not include designated rest and meal periods. You will see that many office‑based and professional employers prefer to set a 40‑hour week over five days while keeping within the ceiling. The legal maximum stays at eight hours per day or forty‑eight hours, per week regardless of how the schedule is arranged.
Some categories of work have limits. For example, roles that involve heat or hazardous conditions may be capped at fewer hours per day. Minors, that is workers aged 14 to 18 are generally limited to six hours, per day. The Minister of Labor also has the authority to reduce these limits further for industries or worker categories.
Rest Breaks and Weekly Rest Day
•Employees cannot be required to work more than 5 consecutive hours without a break.
•A minimum of 1 hour of rest (which can be split across the day) must be provided.
•Every employee is entitled to one full paid day of rest per week.
•Night work (generally defined as between 10 PM and 6 AM) is restricted, with additional protections for women and young workers.
Rest days sit alongside a broader set of leave entitlements — annual leave, sick leave, and public holidays all interact with how a work schedule gets built. If you’re setting up scheduling or leave policy from scratch, it’s worth reading through annual leave, sick leave, and public holiday rules in Egypt alongside this article rather than in isolation.
Overtime Rules
Overtime is only allowed when certain rules are followed. Usually, employees need to be told of time about any extra hours they might have to work. In places companies also have to tell the correct government office about the overtime within a certain time after it happens.
Overtime is usually limited to two hours each day. That means the total time someone works in a day including hours and extra hours should not usually go over ten hours. In some special situations the total time someone is at work can go up to twelve hours. These situations are only allowed if there is a reason.
Overtime pays changes depending on when the work’s done. For hours that go beyond the normal time the pay is usually 35% more than the normal hourly rate. For work done at night the pay is usually 70% more than the normal rate. Some places use multipliers instead like 1.35 times the normal pay for day work and 1.7 times for night work. If someone works on their day off, they get a day’s pay in addition to their regular pay. They also get another day off during the week.
These numbers can be different depending on where you look and what laws are in place. Employers should check with a lawyer or their payroll company to make sure they are using the right pay rates. Getting these numbers wrong doesn’t just create an accounting headache — it flows straight into payroll compliance in Egypt more broadly, since incorrect overtime pay is one of the most common triggers for a wider payroll audit.
Recordkeeping Requirements
Employers are required to maintain accurate records — paper or electronic — documenting actual working hours, overtime shifts, rest periods, and total time employees are present at the workplace. This isn’t optional documentation; it’s the evidence base regulators and labor courts will rely on if a dispute arises over hours worked or overtime owed.
Sector-Specific Flexibility
Certain sectors with inherently irregular schedules — including maritime and logistics, emergency healthcare, transportation, and roles involving intermittent monitoring (such as data center operations) — may qualify for more flexible scheduling arrangements under specific ministerial decrees, rather than being held to the standard daily/weekly caps in the same way as typical office-based roles.
Remote Work and Hours Tracking
Since remote work is now formally recognized under the new labor law, employers with remote or hybrid staff are expected to maintain records of daily working hours for those employees just as they would for on-site staff — the standard hour limits and overtime rules don’t disappear simply because the work happens off-site.
Common Compliance Mistakes
1.Treating salaried staff as automatically exempt from overtime — exemption depends on role classification, not just pay structure.
2.Failing to document rest breaks and weekly rest days — silence in records looks the same as non-compliance during an audit.
3.Using outdated overtime premium rates left over from prior payroll configurations.
4.Not tracking remote employees’ hours with the same rigor as on-site staff.
5.Allowing overtime to become a routine staffing solution rather than an exception for genuine, temporary business need — regulators and labor courts view habitual overtime as a red flag.
Key Takeaway
Egypt’s working hour rules are specific and interact with each other — daily caps, weekly caps, rest breaks, and overtime premiums all need to align for a business to be genuinely compliant, not just superficially so. If your payroll or scheduling system wasn’t built with these specific limits in mind, it’s worth a compliance review before an inspection or dispute forces the issue.