2-2-3 Work Schedule (Panama): Full Pattern and Payroll Math

The 2-2-3 work schedule, better known as the Panama schedule, covers a business 24/7 with four teams on 12-hour shifts: work 2 days, off 2, work 3, then mirror the pattern the next week. Every employee gets a three-day weekend every other week and averages 42 hours, which is exactly where the overtime planning starts.

If you run a plant, a dispatch center, a care facility, or anything else that can't close, this rotation is one of the two or three serious candidates. Here's the full pattern day by day, the payroll math nobody shows you, and the traps to design out before your first cycle.

How does the 2-2-3 work schedule work?

It is a four-team, 12-hour shift schedule. Each team repeats a 14-day cycle: on 2, off 2, on 3, off 2, on 2, off 3. Shifts run 12 hours, commonly 6 AM to 6 PM and 6 PM to 6 AM, so two teams cover every calendar day, one on days and one on nights. Four teams total: two rotating through the day shift, two through nights. Here's the complete two-week grid:

Team	M	T	W	T	F	S	S	M	T	W	T	F	S	S
A (days)	D	D	-	-	D	D	D	-	-	D	D	-	-	-
B (days)	-	-	D	D	-	-	-	D	D	-	-	D	D	D
C (nights)	N	N	-	-	N	N	N	-	-	N	N	-	-	-
D (nights)	-	-	N	N	-	-	-	N	N	-	-	N	N	N

Keep the work schedule layout exactly like that, teams down the side and all fourteen days across the top. The pattern only reads clearly when a full cycle fits on one line; split it into two seven-day grids and the mirroring disappears.

Read Team A's row and the rhythm is obvious: Monday and Tuesday on, midweek off, then the Friday through Sunday block, then the mirror image. Team B works the exact inverse, and C and D repeat the dance on nights.

You'll see the same rotation written as 2-3-2, 2/2/3, or 3-2-2-3 depending on which day someone starts describing it from. The cycle is identical. The four-team plan repeats every 28 days, and most operations rotate teams between days and nights monthly or quarterly so nobody owns the night shift forever.

The hours math: why it averages 42 a week

Each team works 7 shifts of 12 hours every 14 days. That's 84 hours per two weeks, a 42-hour weekly average, but the average hides the alternation that actually drives payroll. With the workweek boundary aligned, and that is a choice worth thousands a year, one week is 3 shifts and 36 hours, the next is 4 shifts and 48, forever.

Coverage totals check out too: four teams times 84 hours per fortnight is 336 team-hours, exactly the 336 hours in two weeks of round-the-clock single-post coverage (24 x 14). That's the pattern's appeal in one line: complete 24/7 coverage, zero gaps, and a rhythm employees can memorize months ahead without a calendar.

What are full time work hours on a 2-2-3?

Forty-two a week, averaged, and a 2-2-3 is a full time work schedule by any measure: seven 12-hour shifts a fortnight is 84 hours against the 80 a five-day crew works in the same period. Employees track it as three shifts one week and four the next, which is also the honest way to describe it in a job posting, because 42 describes a week nobody actually works. For benefits eligibility, PTO accrual, and overtime, what counts is the work hours recorded inside each workweek, never the cycle average.

One bookkeeping rule saves endless confusion: a shift belongs to the day it starts. The night shift that begins Saturday 6 PM and ends Sunday 6 AM is one Saturday shift, not two half-days, or your weekly totals will never reconcile. Set that convention in your time tracking before the first cycle, not after the first messy payroll.

What a 2-2-3 schedule costs in overtime

Federal law is blunt about the 48-hour weeks. Under 29 USC 207, hours over 40 in a workweek are owed at time and a half, and 29 CFR 778.104 forbids averaging: "The Act takes a single workweek as its standard and does not permit averaging of hours over 2 or more weeks." You cannot call the schedule 42 hours and pay straight time. Every employee owes you 8 overtime hours every other week, by design, and considerably more than that if your workweek starts on the wrong day.

Worked example at $20 an hour. The 36-hour week pays $720. The 48-hour week pays 40 x $20 plus 8 x $30, which is $1,040. Two weeks: $1,760 for 84 hours, an effective blended rate of about $20.95. Budget the schedule at that blended rate, not the base rate, or the plan will run roughly 4.75% under reality forever. Calculate work schedule cost across a full 28-day cycle rather than one week, and use a work schedule calculator instead of mental math: run your own crew's numbers through our free overtime calculator before you commit.

Two costs ride along with the premium. Payroll overtime is not an exception on this pattern, it is a permanent line item, so it belongs in the annual budget instead of the variance report. And the premium lifts payroll and payroll taxes together, because employer payroll tax is calculated on gross wages, so every overtime dollar carries its employer share along with it.

States can stack more on top. California owes time and a half after 8 hours in a workday and double time after 12, per the California Labor Commissioner, which changes 12-hour-shift economics substantially outside a formally adopted alternative workweek. And decide the meal break question upfront: under 29 CFR 785.19 a bona fide meal period of 30 minutes or more can be unpaid, so a 12-hour shift with an unpaid half-hour is 11.5 paid hours, and that half hour changes whether the big week lands at 48 or 46 paid hours. Neither answer is wrong. Picking one after the first paycheck dispute is.

Where you put the workweek boundary changes the overtime bill

Almost nobody checks this, and it is worth thousands a year per employee.

The 36 and 48 hour rhythm is not a property of the pattern. It is a property of where the workweek line falls across the fourteen day cycle. Take the grid exactly as drawn, with day one on a Monday. If your workweek also starts Monday, Team A works Monday, Tuesday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday in week one: five shifts, 60 hours, 20 of them overtime. Week two is two shifts and 24 hours. Same people, same shifts, same coverage, and the fortnight carries 20 overtime hours instead of 8.

Start the workweek on Wednesday and the identical grid splits three shifts then four: 36 hours, then 48, with 8 overtime hours per fortnight. Of the seven possible start days for this grid, Monday and Friday give the expensive 60/24 split. The other five give 36/48.

Price the gap. Twelve extra overtime hours per fortnight is 312 hours a year per employee. At a $20 base the premium half alone runs $3,120 per employee per year, and four employees cover one around-the-clock post, so roughly $12,480 rides on a setting you pick once. Aligned, the rotation still carries 208 overtime hours per employee per year, about $2,080 in premium. That part is the price of admission.

You are allowed to choose. 29 CFR 778.105 defines the workweek as "a fixed and regularly recurring period of 168 hours" made of "seven consecutive 24-hour periods," and says it "need not coincide with the calendar week but may begin on any day and at any hour of the day." What you cannot do is keep moving it. A change is permitted only "if the change is intended to be permanent and is not designed to evade the overtime requirements of the Act." Pick the alignment before launch, apply it across the establishment, and have counsel sign off once. Then confirm your payroll system can actually hold it: ask your provider, whether that's Gusto payroll, ADP, QuickBooks, or anything else, where the workweek start day is configured, because a system left on its default will compute the expensive split no matter what your written policy says. Re-cutting it every cycle to chase the cheaper split is exactly what that regulation forbids.

Hospitals and care homes: does the 8/80 rule help?

If you run a hospital, a nursing home, or a residential care facility, federal law hands you an alternative to the 40-hour workweek. A work schedule for nurses built on three or four 12-hour shifts is the classic case, and the 8/80 rule is the first thing anyone will point you toward. Under 29 USC 207(j), those employers may use a work period of fourteen consecutive days in place of the seven-day workweek, paying time and a half for hours "in excess of eight hours in any workday and in excess of eighty hours in such fourteen-day period." It's the 8/80 system, and every consultant who hears "14-day rotation" suggests it.

Price it before you adopt it. On a 2-2-3, the 8/80 system costs more, not less.

Standard workweek rules give you 36 hours one week and 48 the next, so 8 overtime hours per fortnight. Under 8/80, each 12-hour shift runs 4 hours past the daily 8, and the cycle holds 7 shifts, so 28 hours land in overtime. The 80-hour ceiling adds nothing on top, because the daily rule already caught those same hours once. Twenty-eight against eight, at $20 an hour:

Pay basis	Straight time	Overtime	14-day total
Standard 40-hour workweek	76 hrs at $20	8 hrs at $30	$1,760
8/80 work period	84 hrs at $20	28 hrs, half-time premium at $10	$1,960

That's $200 more per employee every two weeks, roughly $5,200 a year for one full-time position, and a 40-person clinical crew turns it into six figures. The 8/80 system was written for facilities running 8-hour shifts whose hours bunch unevenly across a fortnight. A 12-hour rotation is the exact case it punishes.

Two details matter if you're already on 8/80 and eyeing the Panama rotation. The election isn't automatic: 29 CFR 778.601 requires an agreement or understanding reached with the employee "before performance of the work," and that agreement "need not be in writing, but if it is not, a special record concerning it must be kept." You also can't flip between the two systems pay period to pay period chasing the cheaper answer, since the agreement has to be entered into with the intent to use that period permanently or for a substantial period of time. Run both numbers once, pick the one that fits your shift lengths, then check your state's daily overtime rules on top (our state overtime law guides cover the map).

Pros and cons of the Panama schedule

The honest ledger, from operations that run it:

• Pro: 26 three-day weekends a year. Employees are off half of all days, and every other weekend is Friday through Sunday. For recruiting against 8-hour competitors, this is the headline.
• Pro: never more than three days in a row. Compare the DuPont rotation's four consecutive nights. Fatigue on the 2-2-3 stays manageable.
• Pro: two handoffs a day instead of three. Every shift change is a chance to drop information; 12-hour shifts remove a third of them. Plants, dispatch, and healthcare all feel this.
• Pro: predictable months ahead. The pattern repeats every 28 days, so anyone can name their working days next quarter.
• Con: 12-hour shifts are long. The back half of a third consecutive night is where errors and injuries cluster. Physically brutal jobs may belong on 8s.
• Con: paychecks alternate. The 36/48 rhythm means uneven checks unless you explain it clearly and repeatedly before launch.
• Con: built-in overtime. The 8 OT hours every other week are a real cost premium against 8-hour patterns.
• Con: nights need a rotation plan. Fixed night teams quietly turn over. Rotate day/night assignments monthly or quarterly, or accept the churn.

2-3-2, Pitman, DuPont, and the other rotations compared

Shopping the alternatives is worth an afternoon, because they all hit the same 42-hour average with different lifestyles attached:

Pattern	Cycle	Longest stretch	Signature feature	Weekly hours
2-2-3 / Panama	14 days	3 shifts	Three-day weekend every other week	36 / 48
Pitman (2-3-2)	14 days	3 shifts	Same cycle, described from a different start day	36 / 48
DuPont	28 days	4 shifts	A full 7 days off once per cycle	varies, avg 42
3-2-2-3 variants	14 days	3 shifts	Reordered blocks, same totals	36 / 48
9/80 (not 24/7)	14 days	5 days	Every other Friday off, office schedule	40 / 40 with split workweek

Note the last row: the 9/80 work schedule shows up in the same conversations because it also runs on a two-week cycle, but it's a flexible work schedule for offices rather than a coverage rotation, and it avoids overtime through a formal workweek definition rather than paying it. Our sample work schedules guide covers it alongside patterns for retail and restaurants if 24/7 coverage isn't actually your problem.

Between the true rotations the trade is simple. The DuPont work schedule buys a full week off at the price of four consecutive 12-hour shifts. The Panama work schedule and the Pitman schedule are one rotation wearing two names, and the reordered 3-2-2-3 flavors exist to move the long weekend. Fire departments answer the same coverage question a third way: the classic firefighters work schedule of 24 hours on and 48 off trades shift length for more days off, which suits a job where downtime on duty is expected and suits almost nothing else. None of them escapes the payroll rhythm.

Switching to a 2-2-3: the launch checklist

Operations that transition smoothly all do roughly the same six things, in this order:

1. Reprice the labor budget first. Blended rate, not base rate. If the built-in overtime breaks the budget, you want to know before the announcement, not after.
2. Confirm state rules. Daily-overtime and alternative-workweek states change the math. Healthcare has its own carve-outs in some places. One call to your state labor department settles it.
3. Write the conventions down. Which day a night shift belongs to, whether the meal break is paid, what the shift start times are, how holidays pay when half the roster is off anyway. Every one of these becomes a dispute if it lives in someone's head.
4. Draft teams for balance, not friendship. Each of the four teams needs its share of seniority, certifications, and leads, because on nights and weekends the team on duty is the whole company.
5. Announce with the two-week grid and a sample paycheck pair. Show the 36-hour check and the 48-hour check side by side at real wages. Uneven pay surprises people far more than uneven days do. Expect questions about payroll advances in the first month or two, since the alternating check size is what triggers them, and a policy decided in advance beats one improvised at 4 PM on a Friday.
6. Pilot one post for a full 28-day cycle. The pattern's real test is the third consecutive night shift and the first swapped weekend, and no spreadsheet simulates either.

Expect a morale dip in weeks two and three while bodies adjust to 12-hour rhythms, then a rebound once the first three-day weekends land. Crews that have run the Panama for a year rarely vote to leave it; the long weekends buy a lot of forgiveness for the long days.

Running a 2-2-3 without spreadsheet pain

On paper the rotation is a solved problem. In practice the pain is exceptions: a swap between teams, a sick call on a 12-hour post that has to be backfilled today, holiday pay on a schedule where half the team is off anyway. Excel work schedule templates show the pattern beautifully and see none of it. A free work schedule template will project the grid out a year, and it still can't tell you that the swap you just approved puts someone at 60 hours in a workweek. Our weekly work schedule template guide has the grid if you want to start there anyway; keep the running totals column visible and check it on every change.

Scheduling software earns its keep here: build the 14-day pattern once, project it forward indefinitely, and let swap requests flow through rules that flag overtime before you approve, not after. Pair it with a time clock and the math tightens further, because on the 48-hour weeks every punch is already in overtime territory, where a daily 20-minute drift quietly becomes 2 extra OT hours a week. A shared kiosk at the plant entrance handles shift-change crowds punching in at 5:55 AM, and Kloqk's time clock is free, so verifying the hours costs nothing while the schedule itself costs plenty.

The 2-2-3 usually wins on coverage, recruiting, and morale. Go in knowing the real number it costs to win.