OPM Leave Accrual for Federal Employees: Tiers, Ceiling, and Payout

Federal employee leave accrual rates come in two streams. Annual leave accrues at 4, 6, or 8 hours per biweekly pay period depending on your years of creditable service, while sick leave accrues at a flat 4 hours per pay period for every full-time employee regardless of tenure.¹² Over a 26-pay-period year, that works out to 13, 20, or 26 days of annual leave and 13 days of sick leave.

Annual Leave Accrual by Years of Service

Three tiers govern how much annual leave you earn each pay period. The clock is your total creditable federal service, tracked as your Service Computation Date for leave purposes.

Fewer Than Three Years

You accrue 4 hours per biweekly pay period. Across a full leave year that comes to 104 hours, or 13 days.¹

Three to 15 Years

You accrue 6 hours per pay period for most of the year, and then 10 hours in the final pay period of the leave year. The final-period bump brings the annual total to exactly 160 hours, or 20 days.¹ Watch your leave and earnings statement in that final period so you don’t misread the balance jump as an error.

15 Years or More

You accrue 8 hours every pay period, producing 208 hours (26 days) per year.¹ Members of the Senior Executive Service and senior-level or scientific and professional employees earn at the 8-hour rate from day one, regardless of how long they’ve served.³

Sick Leave Accrual

Every full-time federal employee earns 4 hours of sick leave per biweekly pay period. That produces 104 hours (13 days) per year, and the rate never changes with length of service.²

Sick leave has no cap. The statute says unused sick leave “accumulates for use in succeeding years,” and sets no ceiling.⁴ A career employee in good health can easily bank over 1,000 hours, and that balance is not wasted if unused: it converts to service credit at retirement.

Each leave year you may also use up to 104 hours (13 days) of sick leave for family care: caring for a family member who is ill, going with a family member to a medical appointment, arranging matters after a death, or attending a funeral. If a family member has a serious health condition, the entitlement rises to a total of up to 480 hours (12 weeks) of sick leave in a leave year, drawn from your accumulated balance.⁵

Part-Time and Uncommon Tour Accrual

Part-time employees earn leave in proportion to hours worked rather than at a flat biweekly rate. Annual leave accrues at:

1 hour for every 20 hours in a pay status, if you have fewer than 3 years of service
1 hour for every 13 hours in a pay status, at 3 to 15 years
1 hour for every 10 hours in a pay status, at 15 or more years

Sick leave accrues at 1 hour for every 20 hours in a pay status for all part-time employees.¹ If you’re on an uncommon tour of duty, take the full-time biweekly rate for your tier (4, 6, or 8 hours), multiply by your average biweekly hours, and divide by 80.

What Counts Toward Your Service Tier

Your accrual rate is driven by your Service Computation Date for leave (SCD-Leave). All civilian federal service counts, whether covered by CSRS or FERS, and regardless of whether retirement deposits were made.¹

Active duty military service generally counts too. Military retirees are the exception: their uniformed service counts toward SCD-Leave only in narrow situations, such as a retirement based on a combat-related disability or service performed during a war or campaign.⁶

Agency heads can also grant credit for relevant non-federal work experience as a recruiting tool. That credited time is provisional until you complete one full year of continuous service with the agency that granted it; leave before then and the credit disappears, but once you pass the one-year mark it stays with you for the rest of your career.⁷

Extended leave without pay can slow you down. In any calendar year, the first six months of nonpay status still count as creditable service. Anything beyond six months in that same calendar year gets tacked onto your SCD-Leave, which can delay when you cross into the 6-hour or 8-hour tier.⁸

The Annual Leave Ceiling

Annual leave, unlike sick leave, has a hard carryover cap. Most federal employees inside the United States can carry no more than 240 hours (30 days) from one leave year to the next. Two groups have higher ceilings:

Employees stationed overseas: 360 hours (45 days)¹
SES and senior-level or scientific and professional employees: 720 hours (90 days)³

Hours above your ceiling at the end of the leave year are “use or lose” and are forfeited if not taken. For the 2026 leave year, which runs January 11, 2026 through January 9, 2027, use-or-lose leave must be scheduled in writing by November 28, 2026.⁹ Meeting that scheduling deadline is also a precondition for later restoration.

Restoration of Forfeited Annual Leave

Your agency can restore forfeited annual leave in three situations: an exigency of public business that kept you at work, sickness or injury that prevented you from using scheduled leave, or an administrative error that caused the forfeiture. For exigency or sickness claims, the leave must have been scheduled in writing before the start of the third biweekly pay period before the end of the leave year.¹⁰

Restored leave carries its own deadline. You must use it by the end of the leave year that falls two years after the triggering date (the date of restoration for administrative errors, the date the exigency ended, or the date you’re cleared to return after sickness). Miss that window and the leave is gone for good; there is no second restoration.¹⁰

What Your Balances Are Worth When You Leave

When you separate from federal service, you receive a lump-sum payment for all unused annual leave on the books, including any amount above your carryover ceiling, as long as the leave year hasn’t ended and forfeited those hours yet.¹¹ Timing a separation before the leave year rolls over can save use-or-lose hours from being lost.

Unused sick leave is not paid out in cash. Instead, at retirement under both CSRS and FERS, your accumulated sick leave hours convert into additional months of service credit for the annuity calculation. The conversion uses a 2,087-hour work year: divide your sick leave hours by 2,087 to see how much added service you get.¹² An employee retiring with 1,000 hours of sick leave picks up roughly 5 months and 22 days of extra service credit. The credit boosts the annuity computation only; it cannot help you meet the minimum service needed to be eligible for retirement, and it does not change your high-three average salary.

If you move between executive branch agencies without a break in service, both leave balances transfer with you, along with any restored annual leave.¹³

1
U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Fact Sheet: Annual Leave (General Information)
2
U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Fact Sheet: Sick Leave (General Information)
3
eCFR. 5 CFR 630.301
4
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 5 USC 6307
5
U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Sick Leave for Family Care or Bereavement Purposes
6
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 5 USC 6303
7
U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Fact Sheet: Creditable Service for Annual Leave Accrual
8
U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Effect of Extended LWOP on Federal Benefits
9
U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Fact Sheet: Leave Year Beginning and Ending Dates
10
U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Fact Sheet: Restoration of Annual Leave
11
U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Fact Sheet: Lump-Sum Payments For Annual Leave
12
U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Retirement Facts 8 – Credit for Unused Sick Leave
13
U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Fact Sheet: Leave Upon Transfer or Separation