Does FMLA Include Holidays? Counting, Pay, and Closures

Yes, FMLA does include holidays in some situations and not others. When you take a full workweek of FMLA leave, a holiday inside that week counts as part of the week and uses up your entitlement like any other day. When you take intermittent leave and a holiday falls on a day you weren’t scheduled to work, it doesn’t count against your FMLA balance at all. Holiday pay is a separate question that federal law leaves to your employer’s own policies.

Holidays During a Full Workweek of Leave

FMLA leave is measured in workweeks, not individual days. If you take an entire week off under FMLA and a holiday falls inside it, the whole week still counts as one of your 12 workweeks. It makes no difference that you wouldn’t have worked the holiday anyway.¹

Picture 12 consecutive weeks of bonding leave for a newly placed foster child, with Thanksgiving landing in one of them. That week is still a full FMLA workweek. There is no partial-day credit for the Thursday you would have had off anyway.¹

Holidays During Intermittent or Partial-Week Leave

The rule flips when your leave covers only part of a week. A holiday that falls during a partial-leave week does not count against your FMLA balance, unless you were actually scheduled to work that holiday and used FMLA leave instead.¹

Say you work Monday through Friday and take FMLA leave on Tuesday and Thursday, with Wednesday off as a company holiday. Only Tuesday and Thursday count as FMLA leave. Wednesday doesn’t count because you were never expected to work.¹ Flip that scenario: if your employer schedules you to work on Presidents’ Day and you call out for an FMLA-qualifying reason, that absence does count.

For intermittent leave, the Department of Labor measures FMLA usage as a proportion of your actual workweek. Only the hours you would have worked can be charged. Time you weren’t scheduled to work, including holidays, cannot be counted as FMLA leave.¹ This is where employers make honest mistakes most often, so track your own hours next to whatever HR reports.

How Employers Have to Track It

Your employer must track intermittent FMLA leave in time increments no larger than the smallest increment it uses for any other type of leave, and never in blocks larger than one hour. If sick leave is tracked in 15-minute increments, FMLA has to be tracked the same way. And you can never be charged FMLA time for hours you were actually working.²

When the Company Is Closed for Longer Than a Day

Some workplaces shut down for extended stretches. A school might close for two weeks over winter break; a plant might go dark for a maintenance week. Those closure days do not count against your FMLA leave, even if the shutdown overlaps with a leave period you’re in the middle of.¹

The logic is straightforward. If no one at the company is expected to report, you can’t be charged leave for not showing up. Those days pause your FMLA clock rather than draining it.

Do You Get Paid for the Holiday

FMLA guarantees your job and your group health insurance. It does not guarantee any paycheck, including holiday pay. Whether you get paid for a holiday while on FMLA depends on how your employer handles holiday pay for employees on other comparable types of leave. The federal regulation applies a consistency test: your employer must treat you the same as it treats employees on other forms of leave.³

If your employer pays holiday pay to employees on other unpaid leave, it must do the same for you on unpaid FMLA leave. If it doesn’t pay anyone on unpaid leave, it doesn’t have to pay you either.⁴ The same principle applies to bonuses and other benefits beyond health insurance.⁵

The Day-Before and Day-After Rule

Many employers require you to work your last scheduled shift before a holiday and your first scheduled shift after it to qualify for holiday pay. When FMLA leave lands on one of those surrounding days, the consistency test still controls. If the employer would grant holiday pay to someone using vacation the day before a holiday, an FMLA employee substituting vacation should be treated the same. If the employer denies holiday pay to everyone on unpaid leave who misses those surrounding shifts, it can deny yours too.³ The rule protects you from being singled out, and it also means you inherit the restrictions of whatever comparable leave you’re being compared to.

Substituting Paid Leave to Change the Outcome

You have the right to use accrued vacation, sick time, or other paid leave in place of unpaid FMLA leave. Your employer can also require you to burn through paid leave before going unpaid, so you may not get to save it for later.⁶ Paid leave used this way runs concurrently with FMLA, and your FMLA protections stay in place while you draw a paycheck.⁷

Substitution can matter for holiday pay. An employee using accrued vacation may qualify for holiday pay that an employee on straight unpaid leave would not. Look at your employee handbook to see whether holiday pay rules differ between paid and unpaid leave. That difference tells you how much substitution is worth in your situation.

One exception: if you’re out on workers’ compensation or an employer-provided disability plan, substitution rules don’t apply. Neither you nor your employer can require paid-leave substitution in those circumstances.⁶

When Holiday Treatment Becomes Retaliation

Federal law prohibits your employer from using FMLA leave as a negative factor in any employment decision, and FMLA absences cannot be counted under “no fault” attendance policies.⁸⁹

An employer that denies you holiday pay specifically because you took FMLA leave, while granting it to employees on comparable non-FMLA leave, is interfering with your FMLA rights. Same result if a holiday bonus goes to others on leave but not to you, or if you’re written up for an FMLA absence the day before a holiday while non-FMLA absences on the same day go undisciplined.⁸

If you think your rights were violated, you can file a complaint with the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division or bring a private lawsuit. The deadline is generally two years from the last violation, or three years if the violation was willful.¹⁰

1
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet #28I: Counting Leave Use under the Family and Medical Leave Act
2
eCFR. 29 CFR 825.205 – Increments of FMLA Leave for Intermittent or Reduced Schedule Leave
3
eCFR. 29 CFR 825.209 – Maintenance of Employee Benefits
4
U.S. Department of Labor. Employers Guide to the Family and Medical Leave Act
5
U.S. Department of Labor. Family and Medical Leave Act Advisor – Maintenance of Employee Benefits
6
eCFR. 29 CFR 825.207 – Substitution of Paid Leave
7
U.S. Department of Labor. FMLA Frequently Asked Questions
8
eCFR. 29 CFR 825.220 – Protection for Employees Who Request Leave or Otherwise Assert FMLA Rights
9
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet #77B: Protection for Individuals under the FMLA
10
U.S. Department of Labor. Family and Medical Leave Act Advisor – Enforcement of the FMLA