Federal Workers to Get a Few Extra Leave Hours
Thanks to a calendar quirk, most federal employees will have a few extra hours of leave this year.
Federal employees will have 27 pay periods for the 2023 leave year, instead of the usual 26, since the leave calendar started for most agencies on January 1, 2023, and ends on January 13, 2024.
Federal employees accrue annual leave for each full biweekly paid period they are employed.
“This means that most Federal employees will accrue an additional 4, 6, or 8 hours of annual leave in the 2023 leave year based on each individual employee’s annual leave accrual rate,” wrote the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Associate Director, Employee Services Veronica Hinton in a memo.
In addition, employees with three years but less than 15 years of service accrue ten hours of annual leave in the last full biweekly pay period of the year.
Use it or Lose It
Even though employees will get a bit more leave, the extra leave is subject to the maximum carryover ceiling on annual leave.
The memo tells agencies to advise employees that they “must use any annual leave above the maximum leave ceiling (‘use or lose’) before the final day of the leave year (January 13, 2024, for most employees).” Any excess accrued leave will be forfeited if not used by the final leave day of the year.
Currently, most federal employees can carry over up to 30 days of annual leave. Overseas employees can roll over up to 45 days. Senior Executive Service (SES) and senior level (SL) and scientific and professional (ST) employees can carry over 90 days at the most.
Pay Periods
Even though most employees have 27 leave pay periods, most employees will still have 26 pay days in calendar 2023. The OPM memo reminds agencies that leave accrual is affected by the number of pay periods, not pay days in a calendar year. Therefore, payments and payroll deductions will also remain at 26 in calendar year 2023.
For questions, agencies are urged to contact Pay and Leave at OPM. Employees are asked to contact their servicing human resources office or payroll provider.