Federal holidays

Federal holidays are the days Congress designates as holidays for federal employees — New Year's Day, Independence Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the rest of the list in federal statute. For everyone else, the name is misleading: the law that creates them applies to the federal workforce, not to private businesses.

How it works in the United States

Here is the part that genuinely surprises people: no federal law requires private employers to give employees a holiday off, pay them for it, or pay a premium for working it. Under the FLSA, a holiday is an ordinary day. Time-and-a-half on Thanksgiving is a benefit some employers choose to offer, not a legal entitlement.

• Holiday pay is policy: paid holidays, premium rates, and floating holidays come from the employee handbook or a union contract — and once written, they should be honored consistently.
• Paid holidays don't count toward overtime: only hours actually worked count toward the 40-hour overtime threshold.
• A few state exceptions exist: Massachusetts and Rhode Island retain "blue laws" with premium-pay or voluntariness rules for some retail work on Sundays and holidays.

For shift-based teams the real challenge is fairness — rotating who works the big days and saying clearly, in advance, how holiday shifts are paid.

5 U.S.C. § 6103 designates federal holidays for federal employees; no FLSA holiday-pay requirement for private employers — state blue laws (MA, RI) are narrow exceptions.

Related terms

• Overtime pay
• PTO
• Fair Workweek laws