Holiday Pay Calculator

Not by federal law. The Fair Labor Standards Act does not require payment for time not worked, including holidays, and does not require extra pay for working one. Both are a matter of agreement between employer and employee, normally set out in a contract, handbook or collective agreement. Federal holidays are paid days off for federal government employees; for private employers they carry no obligation at all. A handful of states impose narrow rules for particular sectors, so check your state as well as your handbook.

Multiply your hourly rate by 1.5 and then by the hours worked on the holiday. At $22.00 an hour, an 8-hour holiday shift at time and a half is $264.00 against $176.00 at straight time — $88.00 extra. Double time doubles the rate instead. The multiplier is set by your employer's policy, not by law, so check what yours actually pays before assuming 1.5.

Only if you worked the hours. This is the point that trips people up most. The FLSA requires overtime for hours actually worked beyond 40 in a workweek, and a paid holiday you did not work is not hours worked. So 32 hours worked plus 8 hours of paid holiday leave is 40 paid hours with no overtime owed, even though the stub shows 40. Work the holiday on top of 40 hours and overtime does apply, because those hours were worked.

That depends on your employer's policy, and the two are separate things. Overtime is a legal obligation on hours worked past 40; a holiday premium is a voluntary policy. Some employers stack them, some treat the holiday premium as satisfying the overtime obligation where it is at least time and a half. What an employer cannot do is pay less than the FLSA requires for hours actually worked over 40.

There are eleven: New Year's Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Presidents' Day, Memorial Day, Juneteenth, Independence Day, Labor Day, Columbus Day, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day. That list governs federal government employees and federal offices. Private employers are free to observe all of them, some of them or none, and equally free to observe days that are not on the list.

No. Holiday pay and holiday premium pay are ordinary wages, withheld the same way as the rest of your check. A larger check in a holiday week can have proportionally more withheld, because payroll calculates each period as though that pace continued all year — but that is a withholding effect that settles on your return, not a different tax rate.

A salaried exempt employee is paid their full salary for any week in which they perform work, regardless of how many days the business was closed for a holiday. So the practical answer is that the salary does not change. Deducting from an exempt employee's salary for a holiday closure generally puts the exemption at risk, which is why employers rarely do it.

Under federal law you can be, and at your ordinary rate, unless a contract or state rule says otherwise. Premium pay for holiday work is a benefit rather than an entitlement. Where a collective agreement or employment contract promises it, that promise is enforceable — the obligation comes from the agreement, not from the FLSA.