Your pay stub is the first place a payroll mistake shows up, and one nobody flags comes back every payday. Each time you’re paid, check your pay rate, hours, and deductions against what you were promised and what you signed up for. Email payroll the day something doesn’t match.
Payroll pays whatever was entered until someone changes it. A raise nobody keyed in, overtime that doesn’t show up, a health premium charged at the wrong tier, or a 401(k) election that never took effect stays wrong on every check that follows.
The stubs most worth reading come right after a change, such as a raise, a new job, open enrollment, a move to another state, or a new schedule. Each one means someone had to update your payroll record, and the first check afterward shows whether they did.
Keep your offer letter, your benefit elections, and your own count of hours at hand, and two minutes each payday covers the lines that matter.
- Your pay rate and hours, with any raise paid from the date it took effect
- Overtime, if your job qualifies for it, paid at least 1.5 times your regular rate for every hour past 40 in a workweek
- Your health premium for the tier you chose, plus your health savings account (HSA) contribution
- Your 401(k) percentage and whether it’s going in pre-tax or Roth
- State and local tax withheld for where you now live and work, especially after a move
- Your paid-time-off balance, which should grow at the rate you were promised
Each January, check your W-2 against the year-to-date totals on your last stub. Box 1 leaves out pre-tax deductions such as traditional 401(k) contributions, so it should match the stub’s taxable wages, not its gross pay.
When a line is wrong, email payroll or HR a copy of the stub with the correct figure, ask for the difference on your next check, and keep the reply. If unpaid wages or overtime still don’t arrive, the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division, at 1-866-487-9243, and your state labor department take complaints. The division recovered over $259 million in back wages owed to 176,957 workers in fiscal 2025.
A mistake you catch on its first payday takes one email. Find it a year later, and there’s a year of back wages to recover.
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