OP indicated they work shift work - narrow it down to what types of jobs work shifts around the clock. Why do they work around the clock? Some of those types of jobs have minimum staffing levels (Medical fields, emergency response, things of that nature.) By law, some of those types of positions have mandatory call back for staffing. I'll give an example - half the Fire department out sick - other half has to take up the slack. Here's another: traveling nurses sign up for contracts to work temporarily to fill severely short handed hospitals - they work 12-hour days, 6 days a week, for a month (my example based on talking to one of these nurses recently). The hospital is still required to pay them OT for hours worked over 40 so she was getting 33 hours of OT every week while doing the traveling nurse thing. Not everyone is on a 40-hour work week. I know someone that was working on-call disaster relief - they might not get activated for months, but when they do, they wind up working 7-days a week, 12 to 14 hours a day so the majority of their time is actually overtime. Same holds true for Forestry service fire-fighters that only work seasonal - some of those people make 60-80k a year working for 4 months.

OP indicated they work shift work - narrow it down to what types of jobs work shifts around the clock. Why do they work around the clock? Some of those types of jobs have minimum staffing levels (Medical fields, emergency response, things of that nature.) By law, some of those types of positions have mandatory call back for staffing. I'll give an example - half the Fire department out sick - other half has to take up the slack. Here's another: traveling nurses sign up for contracts to work temporarily to fill severely short handed hospitals - they work 12-hour days, 6 days a week, for a month (my example based on talking to one of these nurses recently). The hospital is still required to pay them OT for hours worked over 40 so she was getting 33 hours of OT every week while doing the traveling nurse thing. Not everyone is on a 40-hour work week. I know someone that was working on call disaster relief - they might not get activated for months, but when they do, they wind up working 7-days a week, 12 to 14 hours a day so the majority of their time is actually overtime. Same holds true for Forestry service fire-fighters that only work seasonal - some of those people make 60-80k a year working for 4 months.