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OT is a benefit to the employer. There are usually fixed costs both monetary and others such as regulatory, legal, training, and etc, for having an employee that are not seen in the hourly rate. These fixed costs may make it cheaper in the short run to work OT than to hire another worker.

Even better is having employees work overtime off the clock.

P&G did this with their hourly employees in the 1980s at one of the technical centers. Lab technicians would work past their quitting time during the week, sometimes for hours and come in on Saturdays, all for no pay. People were under pressure to do this; if you didn't, you were branded with "bad attitude". Management denied this practice, which was not consistent throughout the company, but I observed it for years.

They did not work for “no pay”. They may not have received pay for an hourly hourly rate but they didn’t work for nothing either. They got something in return. Maybe they kept their job, or lined themselves up for promotion, or maybe they just got to suck up to the boss.