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If you're working for free today, might as well put your feet up.
If you’re a salaried employee and you’re slaving away at work today, you may be working for free.
Leap years present an odd compensation dilemma for employees who don’t get paid on an hourly basis. Such workers receive a set salary for a typical year, which is usually 365 days. But there's an extra day this year.
Alas, for most employers, it doesn’t matter if leap years have 366 days; they still end up paying salaried workers the same amount.
Does this mean you’re actually an indentured servant on February 29? Employment experts are divided on this question.
Daniel Schwartz, an employment attorney for Pullman & Comley in Hartford, Conn., believes employers are getting a free day of work out of their overtime-exempt employees.
“The annual salary is just that, and the paychecks just reflect the portion of the year. Many employers thus get a 'free' day of work from exempt workers because they are not paying anything more than in non-leap years,” he wrote on the law firm's blog this week.
Others don’t see it that way.
“It’s all baked in,” said Brue Elliott, the manager of compensation and benefits for the Society of Human Resource Management.
If you’re making $100,000 a year, he continued, you get paid that over the course of the year, either weekly, bi-weekly, etc., whether you work 365 or 366 days. “Most employers don’t pay exempt employees on a per diem basis,” he added. Typical offer letters to salaried workers don’t specify you’ll be working a certain amount of days per year, he pointed out. They typically say, “you’re paid on an annualized basis.”
For some salaried workers, the leap year may mean you make more money during this 12-month period.
According to Michael O’Toole, director of publications, education and government relations for American Payroll Association, 2012 has 53 Mondays. So that means, if an employees gets paid every Monday they’ll get 53 paychecks this year, compared to 52 paychecks in 2011.
When there are more weeks in a year, some employers reduce a worker’s weekly pay to make it all come out even at the end of the year, he explained. But, he added, “that’s not great human resources relations.”
Hourly workers don’t have to worry too much about this debate. In the end, they could end up getting an extra day’s pay for an extra day’s work if they work throughout the year and the leap day falls on a weekday, as it does this year.
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sadly, some idiot will believe they are getting screwed. Annual salaries are annual salaries, normally paid over a finite period - for most every two weeks on a Friday. And every two weeks on a Friday comes, well, every two weeks on a Friday whether there are 29 days in Feb or 28. Or whether the month has 30 days or 3 days. And as the article points out, some people get paid more in a year where there are more than 52 weekly pay days or 26 pay days for the every other Friday scenario. Maybe it is just the top 1% who get paid the extra day in a leap year - how's that for a headline to a meaningless story?
Yes a meaningless story from BSNBC a meaningless lame news agency.
Well, I'm not "some idiot" but my annual salary is based on an hourly rate multiplied by 2080 hours, and I'm paid twice per month. So I am working for free on leap day.
Most salaried employees are paid monthly. We can think of February as Christmas, because we work fewer days that month than any other.
@Krotch - Why do you bother to read msnbc if it's just a "lame news agency"? Go over to Faux News, I'm sure that would be more to your liking.
Denton- I disagree that most salaried employees get paid monthly. Any place I've ever worked, salaried employees get paid the same paydays as hourly employees - in most cases every two weeks and in one place twice a month.
Or, another doofus headlline 'Paybacks for Salaried Employees Who Never Work an 8 Hour Day Anyway'!
David - Most salaried employees make way more than hourly employees (we ain't talking about lawyers, etc who bill by the hour). So if you really have a problem w/ it, you can quit your higher paying salaried job and flip burgers for an hourly wage.
How did the song go??? "DON'T WORRY, BE HAPPY!!!"
Most salaried employees get paid every two weeks. This article is largely BS. Companies take the annual salary and divide it by the number of hours or weeks in the year and pay accordingly. Very few people will actually be working for free today. For most it is just like any other two week paycheck they get every other Friday. Every so many years these salaried employees get an extra check based on the day of the eek the year ends on and the day they get paid. For someone paid every two weeks this means that about once every 11 or 12 years they get a 27th paycheck and for those who get paid weekly it is once ever 5 or 6 years depending on how the leap years break in the period.
@ David no you are not working for free, i pay my staff bi weekly, the pay period is from 2/19/12 thru 3/3/12 and fulltime staff will be paid for 80 hours on 3/9/12...bi-weekly pay periods do not "line up" exactly with the calendar year, the only way one could get cheated out of getting paid for leap year is if they are paid once a year...and they get paid the same for a none leap year as for a leap year ( which I have never heard of)...even peopel who are paid on a monthly basis are paid based on the full year salary divided by 12...so they could be working for "free" on months with 31 days, but since their salary is based on working the full year, it all works out..
I have found that people refer to others as idiots are not far from that themselves. Think before you write!
david 1374830
try your math again after days off and over two year period
SURPRISE
The idiot, I'm afraid, is you. Whether you're paid weekly or bi-weekly or monthly is irrelevant. The fact is that this year has 366 days instead of 365. Most likely (depending on how weekends fall) there will be one more work day this year than in a 365 day year. And you're paid the same.
David, if you truly believe that, then you are indeed "some idiot".
you get paid 2080 hours for 1yr but you don't work 2080 hours do you?
You get what 3 4 or even 5 weeks to sit on your lazy butt and get paid?
I think 1 day free every 4 years vs the 100 days of vacation is a fair trade off.
I'm a bit surprised that no state's government employee union hasn't worked "Leap Year" into some kind of a time-and-a-half holiday situation ! Especially here in Connecticut.
I did payroll for years, and how we did it was take the annual salary and divide by either 52 weeks or 26.1 if paid bi weekly. I never calculated payroll by 365 days.
Must be a slow news day if they had to come up with this to get people boiling.
I am salaried, I work over 40 hours a week, I get paid the lowest amount in my organization and if I miss a day of work but do not have sufficient stored vacation time I do not get paid for that day (how is that salary?). I do not care about working today even though technically it is a "free day" for my boss because I have a full time job with a salary, health insurance and a pension. Not many employers offer a pension, and they continue to cover my health insurance after retirement. I am pleased as punch to be working, so I'll give up a day, it isn't like I would be doing anything but snuggling with my puppy and a good book today if I were home.
Oh, and I get paid every other Thursday (26 pay periods in a year).
David is right. Last leap year I was paid $12 an hour - hardly making me a "1%" member. My pay was $12 x 2080 hours divided by 24. I was paid this amount on the 1st and 15th of every month, so yes I did work leap day for free. However this firm was really cheap. We would put in 12 hour days. Then the boss would say, "You must have had some down time during the day. Only claim 8 hours." Finally I brought in a ruling from the Wage Hour section of the Dept of Labor saying this was illegal, and then some of the games stopped. And James, I did leave the firm!
The simple fact of the matter is that companies get an extra day of sales, but they still pay their salaried employees as if they were still working 365 days and not 366.
NO ONE works 365 days at one job.
If you're getting paid every week or every two weeks mathematically it is impossible for you to be working for "free" today as your pay period is the same length as all the others. And even if you're paid bimonthly or monthly, your salary is still divided by number of pay periods (I have never heard of someone counting the rare years when we get an extra pay period and lowering overall salary, so it would always be 52, 26, 24, or 12 generally). This is why you get the same pay in February as you do in July even though there are less possible working days.
The only thing you MIGHT be able to claim is that they're getting an extra day out of you before giving you a raise (but that depends on when and how they do raises). And if you're thinking or complaining about having to work for "free" today, then maybe you don't deserve that raise....
@David, you're not "working" for free on Leap Day. Heck, you are not even working. You are reading the news and posting on a message board.
Wow. How about we are just happy we have jobs and incomes and leave it at that. I'm on salary. I can take a personal day 6 times a year if I want to and if I need time off for family. Giving up 7.5 hours today (it counts for 8, btw) is a small sacrifice I'm willing to make.
I have full medical, dentaland vision. I get a bonus, usually a 1-3% pay increase annually and I love what I do. But, to each their own. If you want to squabble over what amounts to 2 hours a year, go for it. I hope your bosses realizes what entitled biotches you are and cans your as$es.
David-1374830 it's worse than you think. There aren't 52 weeks in a year. There are 52.14285 weeks in a year (365 / 7). Even in a non-leap year your employer is cheating you out of a free 5.7 hours already!
its better to think that for three years they paid you for two hours you didn't work and now your paying them back
Interesting POV. How about if I tell you my company bills me out as an hourly worker but pays me a salary? How does that work for you? Do you still think I'm a lame brain because I question that my company is collecting an extra day of money for me but I'm not sharing in a slice of that pie?
This only affects people that are paid semi-monthly, or monthly, as opposed to bi-weekly.
Bi-Weekly get paid every 2 weeks, usually on a Friday or Monday. Leap year does not affect them.
Semi-monthly means you get paid twice a month, usually the 1st and the 15th. Leap year DOES affect you, and YES, you are technically working an extra day for free. (Salaried employees only)
Monthly, of course, means you are paid once a month (used to be paid that way), usually on the 1st. And YES, it DOES affect you if you are in this category. (Salaried employees only)
If the latter two categories, you have to work 1 extra day in February, (the 29th), before you get paid on the 1st of the next month. It IS a free work day for your employer. Your March 1st paycheck will not be any higher for the extra day worked, so, you worked for free. (Salaried employees only)
But hey, it's nice to have a job, so deal with it.
Most people on 'salary' are paid on a *semi-monthly* schedule (normally the 1st and the 15th of the month). Unlike the calendar year which can change from 365 days to 366 days during a leap year, there are still only 52 weeks in the year. To calculate a salaried employee's semi-monthly pay, you take their annual salary divided by 26 (half of 52) to determine how much they will earn each pay period.
The article (and many of the arguments in the comments) are based on a false assumption: all salaried employees are overtime exempt. The U.S. Dept. of Labor strongly disagrees with that assumption and there is plenty of case law to back it up.
You can call a guy "VP of Sales" and pay him a yearly salary... but if his actual job function is working a cash register for the equivalent of $12/hr, he is non-exempt and entitled to overtime every time he exceeds 40hrs/week. In the U.S., whether or not you are exempt depends only upon two things: the actual work you perform and how much you are paid on an hourly equivalent for that work. Job title doesn't matter. Hourly vs. salaried doesn't matter. How often you get paid doesn't matter.
A previous employer of mine tried to claim all his IT staff was exempt by hiring them with yearly salaries and handing out "analyst" titles. He knew exactly what he was doing - there is an exemption for IT workers who primarily write code or "analyze" business needs and design/implement technologies to meet those needs. Unfortunately, most of his staff were just doing helpdesk support. DoL was not amused.
Where it gets tricky is that non-exempt salaried employees have negotiated a yearly rate. They still fall under the same weekly overtime rules as hourly employees, but have essentially agreed to a lower hourly rate on years with an extra day.
To sum up: many salaried employees are entitled to overtime, but overtime is only calculated on a weekly basis - not yearly. They have agreed to a lower hourly-equivalent pay rate on leap years. They are not "working for free" on a leap day.
Iam going to have my congress person put forth a bill that Leap Year and the one posters comment that 5.7 hours needs to be added to everyone's pay
Iam also going to ask them to repeal all paid vaction.
Want 2,3,4,5 weeks vacation so be it but UNPAID
Works both ways people.
I get paid bi-weekly so I get paid the same. But if you are paid monthly or bimonthly feburary even in Leap year has less days than other months so you are getting more money per day regardless of Leap year or not.
The company I work for is so cheap, they'd argue that they pay us for a day we don't work on non-leap years.
if their so cheap why are you still with them?
The only way this could affect you is if your pay increment is monthly or greater.
Wrong.
Just glad to be working
Yeah, but I'd be happier if I won the MegaMillions.
But on the upside you get a free day of rent every 4 years.
I always felt a little screwed paying the same rent for a 28 day month compared to the typical 31 or 30 day month.
A free day of rent and an extra day to come up with March rent yee haa.
I like the way you're thinking. There are some other benefits to a leap day, if you are a "glass half full" kind of thinker.
I used to get paid salary working the graveyard shift, so every Fall, I had to work nine hours one night and not get paid extra, but then it all worked out in Spring, when I only worked 7. But we still used to bitch about it. :)
Also, if you pay average income tax, you are giving about a full day of pay to the government every week, so think about that one if you really want to get pissed off about something. Or think about the wonderful ways they are spending your money.
This is like arguing that your employer is losing a quarter of a day of productivity every other non-Leap Year.
for some of these people "WHATS PRODUCTIVITY???"
Depending on how the calendar falls for a given year there can be +/- 1 working day regardless of leap year. For my firm, 2009 had 252 days in the year, 2010 and 2011 had 253 - as does, interestingly, 2012. So ... don't focus on leap years. It all washes out in the end.
It does not "wash out." Years vary in terms of work days depending on what day of the week they start on. But in 5 out of 7 leap years, you will have an extra work day compared to a non-leap-year that starts on the same day of the week.
Wow. You realize that you are talking about 5 days over a 28 year period, right? Thats 5 days out of 10,227. Thats .0005%. Thats 120 hours out of a possible 245,448. Stop nit-picking.
How many days per year we work for Oil companies Wall Street speculators to cover their profits ????? How about that ?
JAGA 1147543
in most cases zero
I work 35% of the time for the state and Obama so that he can give it to his union cronnies and welfare voters.
Really, Ace? Really? Obama personally instituted taxes for his personal gain? Never had to pay taxes under a Republican pres? Get some perspective, my friend.
This is seriously stupid!!!!
It depends on how you get paid your salary. I get paid on the 1st and 16th, so actually, for Feb 29th, I"m getting paid more today than I did for Feb 15th, since there were 11 days in that pay period, and there are 10 in this pay period.
For those get get paid bi-weekly, it makes no difference at all. You get paid for 80 hours, and that's that. You can't put 8 days in a week even though a year can have 366 days in a year.
Nobody is working for free today.
@Left: The only issue is if your pay period is monthly or longer. It's a dumb system, but it happens. But then, February is normally only 28 days anyway, so if you get paid monthly, you're getting a higher "daily" rate than longer months.
When I was in grad school, I got a monthly stipend -- so effectively got paid more per day in shorter months, less in longer ones. Not that it matters that much. Now that I'm getting paid bi-weekly, 80 hours is 80 hours.
Wrong.
That's twice. Very astute. Care to elaborate?
Salaried employees are not getting paid for "80 hours." They're getting paid a salary that is set on a rate for the job they do. This is why you still get paid the same salary if you work 85 hours in that pay period or 75 (as long as you work on the days you're supposed to).
Some may calculate this rate using hours, but that is a guideline to go by. And, word of warning...if a company does base a salary on a low hourly wage but then treat you as an exempt employee, you may want to first check to see that you fit the requirements to be a salaried employee and/or start looking for a different job (because there are some companies out there that are just trying to get away from paying overtime and they're doing it illegally).
most salaried workers are paid well so they should be happy if they're not then they should look elsewhere
Has anyone ever asked him/herself how the US Media (newspapers, TV, etc) end up interviewing certain people on the matters, and which are presented as "experts"?
I mean there are thousands of lawyers out there - good and bad, but MSNBC ends up taking the statements of Daniel Schwartz. Got it ???
What's funny is I used to work in the same building as him.
Who cares? Be happy you got a job and quit worrying about trivial matters that relate to "Leap Year." Sheesh.
Just be thankful you have a payday at all and leave it at that.
If you truly think you're being screwed then take a sick day.
Yeah, all my salaried jobs were based on hourly pay and two 40 hour weeks. So I would actually get an extra day's pay this year (depending on how leap day moves weekends around).
If you getting an extra day of pay, you are not salaried
If you getting an extra day of pay, you are not salaried
I would gladly work every Feb. 29th for free if I could just find a job!
This is inaccurate. If you are paid weekly, biweekly, it doesn't matter how many day are in the year. Also, for some people, the exta day may mean an extra pay check for the year.
Yes, this year there are 53 weeks on the fiscal calendar and last year had 52.
wow.... Eve hits a new low..... can't believe i've been reading a column from a real dumb one all this time.
Actually you're too stupid to realize that you are in fact being screwed. 366 days is more than 365. There will most likely (depending on how weekends fall) be an extra work day this year, and you're being paid the same.
It makes absolutely no difference how many days are in the year if you are paid hourly. You work x hours, you are paid for x hours. You are paid for what you work.
If that's the case, then it is YOU who are screwing your employer every other year.
Of course, you won't see it that way, so I'll let you go back to being your angry little self.
Heck, maybe you should get off your salary job and join a union. They're great at assuming they're always getting screwed to the point they run a company into bankruptcy then no one has a job.
I'm pretty sure you do not work 365 (or 366) days in a year at the same job and that your employer does not calculate your salary in increments of days (if they did, you'd be paid daily and you would get a paycheck today just like every other day).
I've been paid on a monthly basis for most of my career, so in February I actually got paid more for doing less. The bottom line is, some years have more weekdays than others, so if you work a five-day workweek your per-day pay varies anyway ...
WTF? Doesn't really matter, somebody is going to get your money anyway.
As a monthly paid (salary) employee I am glad February is short. It means less days for the same pay.l
"Leap Day"? I've always heard of Leap Year, and the 'added day', but...
It takes a whole day's salary just to pay for the gas to get back-and-forth to work for two weeks. So essentially, I'm working for free two days a month.
such petty BS. this is not something new. there's been "leap day" as long as there is Earth history. Just be thankful that you even have a job to go to
I Like Pie
It's ok. How many hours of ACTUAL work is getting done daily anyway?
Not much apparently, everyone is too busy trying to figure up whether or not they're working for free today!
I'll bet most people do not work more than 6 hours out of an 8 hour shift.