Under the federal Family and Medical Leave Act, an eligible full-time employee gets 12 workweeks of unpaid, job-protected leave in a 12-month period. For someone on a standard 40-hour schedule, that works out to 480 FMLA hours per year. The number scales with your actual schedule, and a separate military caregiver entitlement raises the ceiling to 26 workweeks, or 1,040 hours, in a single 12-month period.1eCFR. 29 CFR 825.200 – Amount of Leave
How the 480 Hours Scale to Your Schedule
The 480-hour figure is just 12 weeks times 40 hours. What the law actually protects is the equivalent of 12 workweeks at whatever schedule you keep. Work 50 hours a week on a regular basis and your entitlement is 600 hours. Work 30 and it is 360. A part-time employee on a 20-hour schedule has 240 hours to draw from; a 24-hour schedule gets 288.2U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet #28I: Counting Leave Use under the Family and Medical Leave Act
Overtime changes the math in one direction only. Required overtime hours you miss because of a qualifying reason count against your FMLA bank. Voluntary overtime you skip does not. So if your employer mandates Saturday shifts and a covered condition keeps you home, those hours come out of your total. If Saturdays are optional and you simply decline, your balance stays where it was.
When Your Hours Vary Week to Week
Employees whose schedules swing week to week get an average. If the employer can’t determine with certainty how many hours you would have worked, it uses your weekly average over the 12 months before the leave begins, including weeks in which you took any kind of leave.3eCFR. 29 CFR 825.205 – Increments of FMLA Leave for Intermittent or Reduced Schedule Leave That average becomes your workweek for FMLA math, and 12 times that number is your bank.
Holidays Inside a Leave Period
A holiday inside a full week of FMLA leave doesn’t buy you anything back: the whole week still counts as one workweek used. If you’re taking leave in smaller pieces, a holiday only counts against your balance if you were otherwise scheduled to work that day.
What Your 12-Month Period Actually Looks Like
How many hours you have left at any moment depends on how your employer defines the 12-month window. Federal law allows four methods, and the choice has to be applied consistently to everyone:4U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet #28H: 12-Month Period under the Family and Medical Leave Act
- Calendar year, January 1 through December 31, with a full reset every January.
- A fixed 12-month period, such as a fiscal year or your hire-date anniversary.
- A forward-looking period, measured 12 months from the first day you use FMLA leave.
- A rolling period, measured 12 months backward from each day you use FMLA leave.
The rolling method is the one that catches people off guard. There is no clean reset. Your available hours move as older leave usage falls off the back of the 12-month lookback. You could have 200 hours available in March and 350 in June once earlier leave drops out of the window. It also stops employees from stacking leave at the end of one period and the start of the next.
If your employer never selected a method before you asked for leave, the method most beneficial to you applies by default. The employer can put a different method in place later, but only after giving all employees 60 days’ notice, and the selected method has to be communicated in writing.5U.S. Department of Labor. Family and Medical Leave Act Advisor
Taking Hours in Small Pieces
You don’t have to spend the 480 hours in one stretch. Intermittent leave lets you take time in segments, which fits chronic conditions, periodic flare-ups, and recurring treatment. The employer has to track those absences in the smallest increment it uses for any other leave type. If sick time is tracked in half-hour blocks, so is FMLA.6eCFR. 29 CFR 825.205 – Increments of FMLA Leave for Intermittent or Reduced Schedule Leave
There is a ceiling on how large that increment can be: one hour. Even if the payroll system otherwise tracks leave in full-day blocks, FMLA has to be tracked in increments no larger than one hour. A 45-minute medical appointment cannot cost you an eight-hour deduction.
Military Caregiver Leave: Up to 1,040 Hours
A separate, larger entitlement exists for an employee caring for a covered servicemember with a serious injury or illness. That entitlement is 26 workweeks in a single 12-month period, which is 1,040 hours for someone on a 40-hour schedule.7eCFR. 29 CFR 825.127 – Leave to Care for a Covered Servicemember with a Serious Injury or Illness (Military Caregiver Leave)
The 26 weeks is a combined cap for all FMLA reasons in that 12-month period, not 26 on top of the standard 12. Use 4 weeks for your own health condition and you have 22 left for military caregiver leave, not 26. Of that 26-week total, no more than 12 weeks can go to non-caregiver FMLA reasons.8U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet #28M(a): Military Caregiver Leave for a Current Servicemember
The entitlement runs per servicemember, per injury. A separate 26-week period can be taken for a different covered servicemember, or for the same servicemember with a new serious injury. You can never exceed 26 workweeks in any single 12-month period, no matter how many situations overlap.
Qualifying exigency leave, which covers issues arising from a family member’s active duty deployment, is not part of the 26-week caregiver bucket. It comes out of the standard 12-workweek entitlement.9U.S. Department of Labor. FMLA Frequently Asked Questions
You Have to Be Eligible First
None of these hours are available unless you clear three eligibility rules. You need at least 12 months of employment with your employer (they don’t have to be consecutive), at least 1,250 hours actually worked in the 12 months right before your leave starts, and a worksite where your employer has 50 or more employees within a 75-mile radius.10eCFR. 29 CFR 825.110 – Eligible Employee The 1,250-hour test is strict and counts hours worked, not hours paid.
Public agencies and public or private elementary and secondary schools are covered regardless of size. Private employers are covered only if they had 50 or more employees in 20 or more workweeks in the current or preceding calendar year.11U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet #28: The Family and Medical Leave Act Some states run family leave laws with broader coverage if federal FMLA doesn’t reach you.
The Hours Are Unpaid
FMLA protects the job, not the paycheck. The 480 hours (or 1,040) are unpaid.12U.S. Department of Labor. Family and Medical Leave Act You can substitute accrued vacation or sick time to get paid during your leave, and your employer can require you to use paid balances at the same time. Either way, the paid leave runs concurrently with FMLA rather than extending it. Vacation days spent during FMLA don’t add to your protected time; they just mean some of those hours are paid.13eCFR. 29 CFR 825.207 – Substitution of Paid Leave Several states run their own paid family leave programs that can provide partial wage replacement alongside federal FMLA, so if your state has one, check whether it applies.