How Many Working Days Are There in 2024?

2024 is a leap year, which makes the arithmetic slightly different from the years either side of it.

The short answer: 251 working days, for a standard Monday-to-Friday schedule in the United States observing all federal holidays.

Here is how that number is built, and why yours may not match it.

The calculation

366 days. 2024 is a leap year, so February has 29 days.

Minus 104 weekend days. 366 days is 52 weeks and 2 days. Because 2024 began on a Monday and ended on a Tuesday, both spare days are weekdays — so the year contains 52 Saturdays and 52 Sundays, and 262 weekdays.

Minus 11 federal holidays. Every one of them falls on a weekday in 2024, which is unusual and reduces the total by the maximum possible amount.

262 − 11 = 251 working days.

US federal holidays in 2024

• New Year's Day — Monday 1 January
• Martin Luther King Jr. Day — Monday 15 January
• Presidents' Day — Monday 19 February
• Memorial Day — Monday 27 May
• Juneteenth National Independence Day — Wednesday 19 June
• Independence Day — Thursday 4 July
• Labor Day — Monday 2 September
• Columbus Day — Monday 14 October
• Veterans Day — Monday 11 November
• Thanksgiving Day — Thursday 28 November
• Christmas Day — Wednesday 25 December

That is eleven, not the ten many calendars still list: Juneteenth became a federal holiday in 2021, and the current schedule is published by the Office of Personnel Management as the federal holidays list.

Because none of the eleven falls at a weekend this year, none is shifted. In years where a holiday lands on a Saturday or Sunday, OPM applies an "in lieu of" determination to move the observed day — which is why the working-day total moves by one or two between years even when nothing else changes.

Why your number is probably different

Private employers are not required to observe any of this

The federal holiday schedule binds federal agencies. It does not bind private employers. The Department of Labor is explicit that the FLSA does not require payment for time not worked, including holidays, and does not require employers to give time off for them at all. Nor does it require a premium for working on one — holiday pay is a matter of agreement or policy.

In practice most employers do offer some. BLS survey data puts access to paid holidays at around four in five private industry workers, with an average of eight paid holidays rather than eleven. If your employer observes eight, your working-day count is 254, not 251.

Personal leave comes off the top

Vacation, sick leave and personal days all reduce the number of days you actually work. Someone with 15 days of vacation and a handful of sick days is closer to 230 working days than 251.

Part-time and compressed schedules

A part-time schedule obviously produces a different count. So does a compressed one: a 4/10 schedule covers the same annual hours across roughly 200 working days rather than 251, and a 9/80 lands in between.

Shift work does not use this calendar at all

For anyone on a rotating pattern — a Pitman or DuPont rotation, or Baylor shifts — the Monday-to-Friday framing is not the relevant unit. What matters is the cycle length and the number of shifts within it.

Working days in other countries

The weekday count is the same everywhere the working week runs Monday to Friday; what differs is the public holiday total.

• United Kingdom: eight bank holidays in England and Wales, with different totals in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
• Canada: federal statutory holidays plus provincial ones, so the total varies by province.
• Australia: national public holidays plus state-specific days, again varying by state.
• India: a small number of national holidays plus a long list of regional and religious observances, many of which move year to year.

If you are scheduling across borders, count each jurisdiction separately rather than applying one figure to all of them.

Why the number matters

Capacity planning. Annual targets divided by working days give you the daily rate you actually need.

Budgeting. Labor cost forecasts built on 260 days when the real figure is 251 are out by about 3.5%.

Leave planning. Seven of the eleven holidays fall on a Monday in 2024, so each already produces a three-day weekend. The two midweek ones — Juneteenth on a Wednesday and Christmas on a Wednesday — are where a single day of leave buys the most time off.

Payroll. For salaried staff the number rarely changes anything. For hourly staff it changes everything, which is why calculating work hours accurately matters more in an hourly workforce.