How Many Work Days in a Year (2024)

A traditional 5-day workweek usually amounts to around 249-251 working days per year.

But how many days per year do you actually work? 

Before you calculate your business days in a year, you must make sure you factor in things that may affect the actual number, such as the number of holidays, your workweek schedule, vacation days, and other factors.

Knowing the exact number of working days a year might help you plan your vacation, stay on top of your work — and overall, maintain a healthy work-life balance.

For that purpose, this text will help you:

• Calculate the number of working days in 2024 (with or without vacation days),
• Understand which factors influence the calculation of annual working days,
• Plan your work schedule for 2024 (or help you improve your existing plan), and
• Find answers to most common questions regarding determining work days per year.

• In 2024, there will be 251 working days, minus holidays (for a traditional 5-day work week).
• There are certain factors that influence the number of working days, such as the weekends, holidays, workweek schedule, and vacation days.
• To be able to plan your work schedule for the year thoroughly, make sure to set your goals, determine a planning method, break down tasks into smaller chunks, and maintain a healthy work-life balance.
• According to federal law, employers are not required to provide their employees with time off, either paid or unpaid.
• The year 2024 is a leap year hence has more work days as opposed to 2023, 2022, and 2021.
• Being aware of the number of your working days per year guarantees a steady work-life balance, gives you a better insight into your earnings, helps you make better career decisions, and allocate your workload efficiently.

How many working days in a year will there be in 2024?

There are 251 work days, minus holidays (not including vacation days) in 2024.

To be able to calculate the exact number of your business days for 2024, you need to deduct all the weekends, federal holidays, and vacation days from the total number of days in a calendar year. The total number of days in 2024 is 366 (2024 is a leap year), and the formula is:

Total number of work days = Total number of days a year – weekends – federal holidays – vacation days

Don’t forget to include any other days off you receive from your employer and that certain workers may have to work on federal holidays.

So, the exact number of working days varies, but we’ll help you go through the entire calculation process.

Deducting weekends in 2024

To calculate the number of working days in 2024, you will first need to determine the number of weekends. 

In 2024, there are 52 Saturdays and 52 Sundays — which amounts to 104 weekend days.

You will have to deduct this number, among other things, from 366 later on when doing the calculation.

Deducting federal holidays in 2024

Next, let’s list the federal holidays for 2024 to be able to deduct them later on.

Here is a list of federal holidays in the US and the dates when they are observed for the current 2024: 

1. New Year’s Day — Monday, January 1st,
2. Martin Luther King Jr. Day — Monday, January 15th,
3. Presidents’ Day (or Washington’s Birthday) — Monday, February 19th,
4. Memorial Day — Monday, May 27th,
5. Juneteenth National Independence Day — Wednesday, June 19th,
6. Independence Day — Thursday, July 4th,
7. Labor Day — Monday, September 2nd,
8. Columbus Day — Monday, October 14th,
9. Veterans Day — Monday, November 11th,
10. Thanksgiving Day — Thursday, November 28th, and
11. Christmas Day — Wednesday, December 25th.

You will have an additional holiday if you work in Washington, D.C. — Inauguration Day — which falls on January 20th every 4 years. 

For reference, if a holiday falls on a Saturday, such holiday will be observed on the Friday immediately before, and if a holiday falls on a Sunday, such holiday will be observed on the following Monday. This applies to a standard workweek from Monday to Friday, for which a non-working day is either Saturday or Sunday.

Whether you will be paid or not during federal holidays depends on the type of employee you are. Federal employees are entitled to paid time off for federal holidays, while private-sector employers are not required to offer their employees paid holidays (or time off during holidays). 

One way or another, you will have to deduct 11 days for federal holidays from the total number of days in a calendar year to determine the number of working days per year.

Deducting vacation days

Since US employers are not required to pay for hours not worked, this further implies that any leave, including vacation, is a benefit given to employees based on an employer-employee agreement (or company’s policy for that matter). 

Still, employers are encouraged to provide their employees with time off to maintain a healthy work-life balance, so the average American gets 11 days of vacation leave annually.

Therefore, to determine the number of working days per year, you’ll need to deduct the number of vacation days you receive from your employer per year.

How many work days in 2024: Final calculation 

Finally, let’s take in all the numbers we got in the previous section and determine the number of working days in 2024, with and without vacation days.

First, let’s calculate the number of working days (with vacation days):

Next, let’s calculate the number of working days formula (without vacation days):

Note: If you live and work in Washington, you get a total of 12 federal holidays every 4 years. Also, if you are entitled to any other type of PTO, either by law or employer-employee agreement, make sure you include it in the calculation.

How many work hours are there in 2024?

Now, if you are curious about knowing how many work hours you have in 2024, look at the calculations below. We’ll help you determine working hours for 2024 with and without vacation days.

Calculating the number of working hours for 2024 (with vacation days)

Take a look at the following formula that will show you how to get the annual number of your working hours in 2024 including vacation days: 

Calculating the number of working hours for 2024 (without vacation days)

Up next is the formula that you can use to determine the total number of your working hours in 2024, but without incorporating vacation days into your calculation: 

How to plan for your work schedule in 2024?

No matter if you work a traditional 5-day work week schedule or some alternative work schedule (such as a 4-day work week), making sure you have a well-thought-out plan for tackling tasks is pivotal.  

Therefore, we’re giving you some hands-on tips on how to successfully organize your work schedule.

Tip #1: Set your goals

Setting your goals — whether as an individual or a company — will help you have a better grasp of your priorities, your progress, or areas for improvement. 

Still, setting your goals is easier said than done, so here are some goal frameworks that you may consider using:

• The SMART goals framework — helps you set Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound goals,
• The Objectives and Key Results method (OKR) — used by some of the world’s leading companies such as Google, this effective method is focused on making your objectives more transparent and easily achievable, or
• The Key Performance Indicators (KPI) method — aims to measure how well you perform based on the objectives and goals you’ve previously set for yourself.

Choose a framework(s) that aligns with your needs and preferences and set achievable goals that will help you plan a perfect work schedule for you (and your team members). 

Tip #2: Determine a planning method

When you have your annual goals set, either as an individual or a team manager, you get a better idea of the tasks that need to be done.

Now, the choice of planning methods is vastly different — you can use to-do lists, Kanban boards, and a variety of apps — but here, we recommend you try a scheduling method by using Clockify.

Thanks to the Clockify’s scheduling functionality, you can:

• See your team’s assignments,
• Create new assignments for your team members,
• Define time periods for each assigned task (or change them in the meantime),
• Add additional notes and milestones, and much more.

As you can see in the screenshot above, Clockify uses colored blocks to showcase different tasks assigned to team members together with tasks’ preset deadlines (which you can also edit to your needs and preferences).

Tip #3: Break down tasks

While we are on the topic of assignments, don’t forget that they are more easily managed if you break them down into smaller chunks. This will help you stay on top of your tasks in terms of their priority, estimated time for completion, progress, and more. 

Things to remember when breaking down tasks:

• Identify your tasks clearly (e.g., “enter my work hours every Friday”),
• Prioritize your tasks (this ensures you don’t procrastinate or waste time on unimportant tasks), and 
• Set milestones (helps you stay on top of your deadlines, bring attention to important dates or potential bottlenecks).  

Tip #4: Retain a healthy work-life balance

Last but not least — leave some time for vacation or personal time off when planning out your work schedule.

When doing so, you must take into account the time that you will use to rest and recharge. Early vacation planning will encourage you and your team members to perform well, increase team morale, and make you feel more content, after all. 

As a matter of fact, a study by the Institute for Applied Positive Research discovered that 97% of the surveyed people feel happier when they have their vacation plans booked in advance.

How many working days in a year — FAQs

If you haven’t found an answer you’re looking for in the above section, here are some most common questions asked regarding working days in 2024.

How many work days in a year minus holidays?

Calculating your annual business days requires deducting eligible holidays from the total number of days per year.

Therefore, the number depends on the holidays you are entitled to. For state employees and most private companies that number is clear — the number of working days in a year minus holidays equals 251 working days in 2024.

Note: The number of holidays in the calculation is 11, and it doesn’t include vacation days. If you work in Washington, D.C., you get an additional holiday Inauguration Day every 4 years. Also, if you work in a private company, check your company’s policy regarding the number of holidays you are entitled to.

How many work days in a year including holidays?

If your employer requires you to work during federal holidays (this may happen in private sectors only), then the total number of working days in 2024 including holidays is 262 (not including vacation days).

Still, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics from 2024, 80% of private-sector workers had the right to paid holidays in 2023.

How can I calculate the number of working days in 2024 for my specific state?

The number of working days per year depends on:

• The number of weekends per year,
• The federal holidays you are entitled to, and
• The number of vacation days you receive from your employer.

The exact number doesn’t have to do with the state you work in, as all federal employees are entitled to federal holidays, while private sector employees receive time off during holidays as a matter of employer-employee agreement. 

The only thing that’s state-wise is the number of federal holidays in Washington, where employees have 12 federal holidays every 4 years.

Will there be more or fewer working days in 2024 compared to previous years?

Since 2024 is a leap year, so the total number of working days amounts to 251, there will be more working days in 2024, as opposed to the previous 2023, 2022, and 2021 (which were not leap years).

Take a look at the number of working days in the 3 previous years:

• In 2023 there were 249 work days,
• In 2022 there were 249 work days, and
• In 2021 there were 250 work days.

Will there be more or fewer working days in 2025 compared to 2024?

As for the following 2025, there will be fewer working days compared to 2024 — more specifically, the total number of working days in 2025 will be 250. 

How many paid days off do I get a year?

Federal employees are entitled to paid time off for federal holidays, so they get 11 paid days off per year. 

Private employees, on the other hand, are entitled to the number of paid days off stated in the employer-employee agreement.  

According to the FLSA, employers are not bound by law to pay for their employees’ non-working hours, whether for vacation, personal time off, or sick leave. This applies to maternity leave, too.

How many average work days in a year?

The average number of business days in a year is usually between 249 and 251, minus holidays, depending on the number of weekend days and whether a year is leap or not.

Why is it important to know how many working days there are in a year?

The reasons are vast and might depend on different needs, but here we list some of the most common reasons for knowing the number of work days per year:

• Improving your work-life balance — scheduling personal time off and recharging your batteries guarantees peak performance at work, feeling content, and keeps you from overworking. 
• Being aware of your earnings — Knowing the number of your working days a year helps you determine your annual income, hourly or freelance rates, be in control of your spending, or build a personal financial plan.
• Making better career decisions — if you are planning to change your job, bear in mind that knowing about your annual working days may help you get more insight into the job offer itself, such as the workload, offered PTO, and more. 
• Allocating workload efficiently — when you are aware of the number of both your work days and days off, you can manage your workload and organize your priorities better.

Keep track of your work days by using Clockify

If you are looking for a reliable tool to stay informed on your employees’ work and non-work days, manage leaves, or holidays — Clockify will make sure you don’t miss any. 

With Clockify, you’ll be able to:

• See who’s away and when,
• Create PTO policies for your employees,
• Approve time off requests (employees can request time off, too),
• Export time off and get all balances either in CSV or Excel, and more.

Clockify can be your ally in making sure your employees take time off without a hitch, while you keep a cool head that all time off requests are managed safely.