Dates and DaysFederal Holidays and the Observed-Date Rule
There are eleven federal holidays, and federal offices close on them. Other employers and the stock markets set their own closing days, and when a holiday lands on a weekend, federal offices take a weekday off instead. Between 2000 and 2029 that happens 38 times.
The eleven, and how they are defined
The list is set by statute at 5 U.S.C. § 6103. Five holidays have fixed dates: New Year's Day, Juneteenth, Independence Day, Veterans Day (11 November) and Christmas Day. The other six are set by their position in the month: the third Monday in January, the third Monday in February, the last Monday in May, the first Monday in September, the second Monday in October and the fourth Thursday in November. Thanksgiving is the only one of those six not on a Monday. The federal holiday calculator works out each date for any year from 1978 on, and shows the observed date beside the statutory one.
Because those six are rules, this site works each one out from its rule for the year in question. The one recent change to the list is Juneteenth, added in June 2021, so a calculation over a period before then should not remove it, and a calculator that removes it from a 2019 span is wrong about history.
The observed-date rule
Federal employees are entitled to the day off, and a holiday that lands on a weekend would take it away. So the observance moves: under 5 U.S.C. 6103(b) a holiday falling on a Saturday is observed on the Friday before, and under Executive Order 11582 of 1971 one falling on a Sunday is observed on the Monday after.
This rule is behind many business-day disagreements. In 2026 Independence Day falls on a Saturday: the holiday is 4 July, and offices close on Friday 3 July. A calculation that removes the 4th removes a day that was already a weekend and keeps the 3rd, the working day offices lose, so it comes out one day short. The business days calculator removes the observed day and labels it as observed, so you can see the substitution.
A Saturday holiday moves backwards. It is the one case where a deadline can land earlier than a plain reading suggests, and early is the direction that costs you.
Who closes on which days
The federal list governs federal offices. Everyone else decides for themselves, and the four groups you are most likely to be counting against differ:
- Federal offices and the postal service follow the statutory list and the observed-date rule.
- Banks largely follow the same list, because the Federal Reserve does, so settlement stops.
- Stock markets keep a separate calendar. It is close to the federal list, and the most visible difference is Good Friday: the US equity markets close, and it is not a federal holiday.
- Employers set their own. Many observe a subset, many add days that appear on no public list, and some work through days everything else is shut.
State holidays add another layer, and courts often follow the state list. Where a deadline turns on a specific institution being open, that institution's own calendar is the authority, and no general list can stand in for it.
What this site does
The calculators compute the federal holidays from the statutory rules for any year from 1978 on, move a weekend holiday to its observed day, and never remove Juneteenth from a date before it existed. Holiday removal is optional, because many real calculations should not remove holidays. When it is on, every removed day is listed by name and date, so you can check the answer. The full method sets out each rule.