I'm a Personal Assistant Working Long Hours. Am I Entitled to Overtime in California?

Are Personal Assistants Entitled to Overtime?

Yes, in almost every case. Under California law, employees are presumed non-exempt, meaning entitled to overtime, unless the employer can prove a specific exemption applies. A job title like "personal assistant" or "executive assistant" doesn't create an exemption by itself, what matters is the actual work performed.

Some employers assume that because a personal assistant works closely with an executive, wealthy family, or public figure, the role must carry the same kind of exemption that applies to true executive or administrative employees. That's a misunderstanding of how exemptions work. The administrative and executive exemptions require independent judgment on significant business matters and, usually, direct supervisory authority over other employees, neither of which typically describes running errands, managing a calendar, or coordinating a household.

It's also common for these roles to blur into household employment, driving family members, picking up dry cleaning, managing home vendors, alongside more traditional office-style assistant duties. Mixing those tasks together doesn't change the underlying analysis. What matters is whether, in practice, the job leaves room for the kind of independent decision-making that the law requires for an exemption, and for most personal assistants it simply doesn't.

The "Personal Attendant" Exemption, and Why It Rarely Applies

California does recognize a narrow exemption for a "personal attendant," someone employed by a private household to supervise, feed, or dress a child or a person who needs care due to age, illness, or disability. This exemption is aimed at in-home caregiving, not general household or business assistant work.

If your actual duties are scheduling, correspondence, errands, travel coordination, or managing a household or office rather than personal care of someone who needs supervision, this exemption almost certainly doesn't apply to you, regardless of what your offer letter calls the role.

The exemption also generally requires that caregiving be the primary duty, not an occasional part of a broader role. A part-time caregiver who spends the bulk of a shift helping an elderly family member with daily activities may fall under the exemption, but someone hired as a "personal assistant" who occasionally helps out with a household member's care between scheduling calls and errands usually doesn't, since supervision of that person isn't the actual core of the job.

Even where a personal attendant exemption might technically apply, California still generally requires minimum wage for all hours worked, and the exemption doesn't excuse an employer from other basic wage protections like timely payment. Assuming an exemption applies without checking the actual duties test is one of the more common, and costly, mistakes we see in this area.

How Overtime Is Calculated for Long, Irregular Hours

For non-exempt personal assistants, California requires time-and-a-half for hours worked beyond 8 in a day or 40 in a week, and double time beyond 12 hours in a day. Irregular scheduling doesn't change this math, every hour actually worked, including time spent on-call if you're required to remain available and responsive, generally counts.

Travel adds another wrinkle that trips up a lot of assistants and employers alike. Time spent traveling with an employer, on a flight, in a car between appointments, waiting at an airport if you're expected to be reachable, is often compensable, especially when you can't use that time freely for your own purposes. A day that looks light on paper, "just a flight to New York," can still be a full workday if you were effectively on duty the entire time.

Text messages and calls answered after hours matter too. If an employer routinely expects a quick response to a late-night email or a weekend scheduling request, those minutes add up over a pay period, and they're supposed to be tracked and paid like any other work time, not treated as a favor you're doing off the clock.

Example

You're paid a flat day rate to travel with an employer and end up working 11 hours one day. If you're non-exempt, you're generally owed 8 hours at your regular rate, 3 hours at 1.5x, calculated from your actual hourly equivalent, not just the flat day rate divided evenly.

What to Do If You're Not Being Paid Correctly

Start by estimating what your hours should actually be worth using our take-home pay estimator, then compare that to what you're actually receiving. If you're paid a flat salary or day rate regardless of hours worked, our companion article on whether a personal assistant can legally be paid a flat rate covers that specific issue in more depth. If the numbers don't add up, that gap is worth having reviewed.

Keep your own informal log if your employer doesn't provide clear time records, dates, approximate start and end times, any travel, and any after-hours calls or messages you responded to. Personal assistants often work without a formal timeclock, which makes contemporaneous notes, even a simple running note in your phone, one of the most useful things you can bring to a case review.

It's also worth checking your pay stubs for basic red flags: no listed hourly rate, no breakdown of regular versus overtime hours, or a rate that changes depending on which tasks you performed that week. These aren't decisive on their own, but they're common signs that the underlying pay structure hasn't been set up to comply with California's overtime rules in the first place.