Holiday weeks can pose an extra administrative challenge to employers with employees on leave under the federal Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). In addition to their regular FMLA obligations, employers must figure out how to calculate employees’ leave use when the leave coincides with a holiday.

FMLA regulations and an opinion letter from the U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL’s) Wage and Hour Division help clarify how employers should address holidays when calculating employees’ FMLA leave. The letter distinguishes between full and partial weeks taken during a week with a holiday and explains the proper way to determine the portion of a workweek used.

The FMLA entitles eligible employees of covered employers to take up to 12 workweeks annually of unpaid job-protected leave for qualifying family and medical reasons. Employees may take up to 26 workweeks of FMLA leave during a single 12-month period to care for a covered service member.

The FMLA permits employees to take the leave intermittently (in separate blocks of time) or on a reduced schedule (reducing the time worked in the day or week) in certain circumstances. The FMLA regulations specify that only the amount of intermittent leave actually taken may be counted against the employee’s leave entitlement. Employers may convert an employee’s FMLA workweeks to an hourly equivalent for ease of tracking, but the actual workweek is the basis of leave entitlement. In other words, the employee’s FMLA entitlement must be based on the employee’s total normally scheduled hours.

The regulations provide the following examples:

The calculation for leave in this situation is straightforward. The FMLA regulations state that when a holiday falls during a week that an employee is taking a full workweek of FMLA leave, the entire week is counted as FMLA leave. The regulations provide the example of an employee who works Monday through Friday and takes leave for a week that includes the Fourth of July on Thursday. Under the rule, the employee uses one week of leave and not four-fifths of a week.

Calculating FMLA leave is more complicated when a holiday falls during a week when an employee is taking less than a full workweek of FMLA leave. In this case, according to the regulations, the holiday is not counted as FMLA leave unless the employee was scheduled and expected to work on the holiday and used FMLA leave for that day.

The DOL provided additional guidance on calculating FMLA during holiday weeks in Opinion Letter FMLA 2023-2-A. The letter addresses whether an employee taking intermittent or reduced-schedule FMLA leave during a week that includes a holiday uses leave equal to a fraction of their usual workweek or a fraction of a reduced workweek (the employee’s usual workweek less one day).

The Wage and Hour Division advised that if the employee is not scheduled to report for work during the holiday, the holiday does not count as FMLA leave, and employees use a fraction of their usual, full workweek. The DOL said that subtracting the holiday from the workweek would impermissibly reduce the employee’s leave entitlement because the employee would have to use a larger amount of FMLA leave than needed.

Therefore, employers calculating FMLA leave for employees not expected or scheduled to work on the holiday should divide the amount of FMLA leave taken (which does not include the holiday) by the total workweek (which does include the holiday) to determine the fraction of the workweek used.