Working time in Peru: hours, overtime and control

Working time rarely appears on a management agenda until something goes wrong: an inspection finds no attendance records, a former employee claims years of unpaid overtime, or a rotating roster at a remote site turns out to exceed the legal average. By then the liability has been accumulating for months or years, one hour at a time.

This guide explains the Peruvian working time system as a whole: the legal limits, who is excluded, how schedules can be designed, overtime and night work, breaks and rest days, time records, and how pay components interact with overtime and benefits. It is written for operations, HR and finance leaders who design schedules and approve payroll.

Executive overview

• The limit: eight hours a day or 48 hours a week, with flexibility through averaging.
• The exclusions: management staff, employees not subject to immediate supervision, and intermittent waiting, watch or custody services.
• Overtime: voluntary, paid at 25% and 35% premiums, or compensated with time off by agreement.
• Night work: 10:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m., with a pay floor of the minimum wage plus 35%.
• Records: a permanent attendance record is mandatory for employees within the limits.

Legal framework

• Article 25 of the Constitution sets the ordinary maximum at eight hours a day or 48 hours a week, allows cumulative or atypical schedules whose average does not exceed that maximum, and guarantees paid weekly and annual rest.
• Supreme Decree 007-2002-TR, the consolidated Law on Working Time, Schedules and Overtime, and its regulations, Supreme Decree 008-2002-TR, develop the limits, exclusions, overtime, night work and meal breaks.
• Supreme Decree 004-2006-TR regulates the attendance record.
• Legislative Decree 713 governs weekly rest, public holidays and annual leave.
• The Telework Law (Law 31572), amended by Law 32102 (2024), and its regulations, amended by Supreme Decree 009-2026-TR, add rules on time recording and digital disconnection for remote work.

Proposals to reduce the weekly maximum have been discussed in Congress, but no law has been approved as of the date of this guide. Employers should plan on the current 48-hour limit and monitor developments.

The limits and how to use them

Eight hours a day, 48 hours a week

The limit is ordinary working time. Employers may set a shorter schedule by law, agreement or unilateral decision. Under the statute, they may also set alternative, cumulative or atypical schedules — for example, longer days on some days and shorter or free days on others, or rotating rosters common in mining, energy and remote operations — provided that the average hours over the period do not exceed the maximum.

Averaging is the key tool, and the key risk. A roster that looks acceptable week by week can exceed the average over the full cycle once travel days, handovers or extended shifts are counted. Schedules should be modeled over the whole cycle before they are implemented. Our briefing on atypical and cumulative work schedules in Peru explains how to design and document them.

Who is excluded

The statute excludes from the maximum:

• management personnel (personal de dirección), who represent or replace the employer with decision-making power;
• employees not subject to immediate supervision (no sujetos a fiscalización inmediata), whose work is organized in a way that the employer cannot effectively control their hours; and
• employees providing intermittent services of waiting, watch or custody.

Trusted employees (personal de confianza) are, as a rule, subject to the maximum unless they also fall into one of these categories, for example because they are not subject to immediate supervision. The exclusion depends on the facts of the role. A sales manager who clocks in, follows a fixed schedule and reports to a supervisor on site is not “unsupervised” because of a title. See maximum working hours in Peru for the analysis.

Averaging in practice

The averaging rule is simple to state and easy to miss in practice. Take an illustrative 14-by-7 roster — fourteen days on site followed by seven days off — with shifts of 11 effective working hours. Over the 21-day cycle the employee works 154 hours, which is an average of about 51.3 hours a week across three weeks: above the 48-hour limit, even though the employee has a full week off. The same roster with 10-hour shifts produces 140 hours, an average of about 46.7 hours a week, within the limit. The difference is one hour a day, and it decides whether every roster cycle generates overtime.

Three points follow. First, the calculation must use effective working time, which means deciding how meal breaks, travel inside the site, handovers and waiting time are treated — and documenting that decision. Second, the cycle used for averaging must be the real cycle, not a convenient period chosen to make the numbers work. Third, hours above the average are overtime and must be paid or compensated as such.

Overtime

Overtime (sobretiempo) is work beyond the ordinary schedule, whether the ordinary schedule is the legal maximum or a shorter one set by the employer.

• Voluntary: neither the employer nor the employee can be compelled, except in cases of force majeure or unforeseeable events that put people, property or business continuity in imminent danger.
• Premium: at least 25% of the hourly rate for the first two hours, and at least 35% for additional hours.
• Time off in lieu: the employer and employee may agree to compensate overtime with equivalent rest periods.
• Imposed overtime: if the employer imposes overtime, it must pay an additional indemnity equal to 100% of the overtime value, and the imposition is an administrative infringement.
• Tacit authorization: overtime actually worked without prior authorization is presumed to have been tacitly authorized, and must be paid.

The practical consequence of the last point is that “we never authorized it” is not a defense if the time records show the employee working late. Controlling overtime therefore means controlling when employees can be present and working, not only approving requests. The briefing on overtime in Peru: pay, consent and control covers policies and approval workflows.

Night work

Night work is work performed between 10:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m. An employee who works on a night schedule may not receive a weekly, fortnightly or monthly pay below the minimum wage plus 35% — S/ 1,525.50 a month with the current minimum wage of S/ 1,130 (Supreme Decree 006-2024-TR). An increase in the minimum wage has been announced but still requires a supreme decree; when it is issued, the night floor rises with it. The employer should also seek to rotate staff between day and night shifts. Our briefing on night work in Peru explains how the floor interacts with pay structures above the minimum.

Breaks, weekly rest and public holidays

Meal break

The meal break (refrigerio) must be granted and lasts at least 45 minutes. It must fall within the working day — not at its beginning or end — and it is not working time unless an agreement or established practice says otherwise. See meal breaks in Peru.

Weekly rest and public holidays

Employees are entitled to at least 24 consecutive hours of rest each week, preferably on Sunday. Work on a weekly rest day or a public holiday without substitute rest is paid with a 100% premium in addition to the day’s ordinary pay. The list of public holidays has been extended by recent laws; employers should work from the official list published on the government portal rather than from older calendars.

Time records

Employers must keep a permanent attendance record showing the start and end of each working day, including overtime. The record may be kept in physical or digital form, and employees must have access to their own information. Management staff, employees not subject to immediate supervision and those providing intermittent services are excluded from the record.

For teleworkers, the employer must also adopt mechanisms to record working time and guarantee a digital disconnection period of at least 12 continuous hours in each 24-hour period. Since the 2024 amendments, documented power or internet outages cannot justify pay deductions or the recovery of hours.

The 2026 amendments to the telework regulations (Supreme Decree 009-2026-TR) reinforce this framework: teleworkers must give five business days’ notice before changing their usual place of work, the employer may verify working conditions with at least 48 hours’ notice, active breaks are expected, and personal activities during working hours require authorization. Telework policies should therefore address time recording, availability windows and disconnection together, rather than treating remote employees as outside the working time system.

Pay: how the pieces connect

Working time and pay are inseparable, because the hourly rate that drives overtime, and the computable pay that drives benefits, depend on how pay is structured.

What counts as pay

Under the Productivity and Labor Competitiveness Law, remuneration is everything the employee receives for his or her services, in cash or in kind, whatever its name, provided it is freely available to the employee. The main meal provided by the employer counts. Certain items listed in the CTS statute are not remunerative — for example, occasional extraordinary bonuses, profit sharing, the cost of working conditions, transport allowances tied to attendance and covering only commuting, Christmas hampers, and allowances for birthdays, marriage, births or deaths. See remunerative and non-remunerative payments in Peru.

Computable pay

Benefits such as CTS are calculated on computable pay (remuneración computable): base pay plus the amounts the employee receives regularly, in cash or in kind, as consideration for work and freely available, including the main meal and, for CTS, one-sixth of the gratificaciones received in the semester. A variable payment is regular if it is received in at least three months of each six-month period, in which case an average is used. Our briefing on computable pay in Peru explains the rules and the most common calculation errors.

The table is a starting point. The classification of each item depends on its real features, not its label: a payment called “extraordinary” that is paid every month is regular pay. Relabeling regular payments as non-remunerative distorts overtime and benefit calculations at the same time, and it is a point inspectors and courts review closely, because the effect is spread across every month and every affected employee.

Working time in inspections and claims

Working time is a standard item in labor inspections. SUNAFIL, Peru’s national labor inspection authority, typically asks for the attendance record, schedules, overtime payments reflected in payslips and, for atypical rosters, the calculation that supports the average. Imposing overtime is an administrative infringement in itself, and missing or unreliable records make it difficult to rebut findings about unpaid hours. Fines are set in tax units according to severity and the number of affected workers, so a record-keeping gap across a whole workforce is priced very differently from an isolated error. The guide to labor inspections in Peru explains the procedure and how fines are calculated.

In litigation, the dynamic is similar. A former employee claiming overtime will usually rely on emails, system logins, building access data or colleagues’ testimony. If the employer’s official record contradicts that evidence — or does not exist — the employer is at a disadvantage. Consistency between all the data sources that show when people work is therefore part of compliance, not an IT detail.

Special regimes and collective agreements

The rules in this guide are those of the general private-sector regime. Collective agreements may set shorter hours or higher premiums, which then bind the employer. Some sectors follow special regimes — civil construction, for example, where pay and conditions are largely set by sector-wide collective bargaining — and micro and small enterprises in the special MYPE regime have their own benefit rules, although the working time limits are the same. Employers operating in these contexts should check the applicable instrument before relying on the general rules.

Designing a compliant working time system

We recommend the following process as a professional standard:

1. Map roles and classify each as within the limits, management, unsupervised or intermittent — based on how the job is performed.
2. Define schedules for each group, including breaks, and model cumulative or atypical rosters over the full cycle.
3. Set an overtime policy: who may request it, how it is approved, how it is recorded, when it is paid or compensated with time off.
4. Implement time recording for all employees within the limits, including teleworkers, with employee access to their data.
5. Review night work and weekend or holiday work, and confirm the night pay floor and the rest-day premium.
6. Reconcile records with payroll monthly: every recorded hour beyond schedule should be paid, compensated or explained.
7. Audit periodically and correct classification errors before they turn into claims.

What management should do

• Treat working time as a financial exposure, not only an HR policy. Unpaid overtime is a liability that grows every month.
• Require that exemptions from working-time limits be justified in writing by role, and reviewed when roles change.
• Make sure systems that record building access, logins or remote activity are consistent with the official attendance record; inconsistent data will be used by the other side.
• Give line managers clear rules: they are the ones who ask people to stay late, answer messages at night or reorganize shifts, and their instructions are what creates overtime in practice. Training them costs far less than paying accumulated claims.
• Include working time in the monthly payroll close: the person who approves payroll should see recorded hours beyond schedule and confirm how each was treated.
• For regional headquarters: global “exempt” classifications from other jurisdictions do not carry over to Peru. A manager who is exempt elsewhere may be within the limits in Peru.

Frequent mistakes

• Treating every manager or trusted employee as exempt from the limits.
• Keeping no attendance records, or records that do not reflect reality.
• Allowing employees to stay late routinely without recording or paying overtime.
• Scheduling meal breaks at the start or end of the day.
• Designing rotating rosters without checking the average over the full cycle.
• Paying night workers a salary above the minimum but below the night floor.
• Labeling regular allowances as non-remunerative, which distorts overtime and benefit calculations.

Where to go next in this cluster

Begin with maximum working hours in Peru to classify roles correctly, then read overtime in Peru to set approval and payment rules. Operations with shifts or remote sites should review atypical and cumulative work schedules and night work in Peru; every employer should check meal breaks. On the pay side, computable pay and remunerative and non-remunerative payments explain how pay design feeds into overtime and benefits.

Our working time and overtime service reviews schedules, classifications and records, and the statutory benefits review checks how pay components feed into benefits. For a quick diagnosis, use the employment compliance check. Benefits themselves are covered in the guide to employee benefits, and foreign companies will find the wider picture in employing in Peru.

Key takeaways

The Peruvian working time system is flexible in design but strict in evidence. Employers can use averaging, rotations and exemptions — as long as the exemptions match reality, the averages hold over the full cycle and every hour worked is recorded and paid or compensated. The companies that manage working time well are the ones that can show, at any moment, who worked, when, and how it was paid.