OT is a very big sink, it’s cheaper to hire more employees than, if one can, than it is to pay staff OT.
That isn’t necessarily true. Assuming OT is paid out at a time and a half rate, if you have one employee working 50 hours a week at $10 an hour, you would pay $1040 + $1510 = $550 per week, plus the cost of benefits per employee, which is $75 per week. Total: $625
If you hire an additional employee, each working 25 hours for $10 an hour, you pay $500, but the cost of benefits has doubled to $150. Total: $650
This is a extremely simple example. I am ignoring the fact that you would probably pay someone new to the job at a lower rate, the associated training costs of hiring an employee, payroll taxes, most businesses employ a higher number of people, does the business do 401K matching, whether these people work on the same shift and probably a hundred other things.