Free tool
See what you should be paid for working on a public holiday. Enter your rate, hours, and jurisdiction, and the tool breaks down base, overtime, and any statutory premium line by line so you can check it against your payslip.
For your reference only, pay math does not depend on the calendar date.
Surfaces a reminder to check the agreement on top of statute.
Every line shows the formula used. Edit any input above to update.
Total holiday-day pay
$200.00
For 8h worked on the holiday.
Equivalent hourly rate (this day)
$25.00/ hr
Blended over the holiday hours only.
Federal law (FLSA) does not require any extra pay for working on a holiday. Overtime is only owed at 1.5× after 40 hours in a workweek. Holiday premiums are at the employer's discretion or per a collective bargaining agreement.
Sources
This calculator computes the statutory minimum pay for hours worked on a holiday. It layers in overtime when the week crosses a federal or state threshold and applies the rare statutory holiday premium (Rhode Island) when it kicks in. It does not assume any contractual time-and-a-half or double-time on bank holidays, those are policy, not law, and you have to read your contract to find them. Same for shift differentials, on-call pay, and union top-ups. If your employer pays more than the floor here, that's policy. If they pay less, you have something to ask about.
US wage law stacks bottom-up. Federal FLSA sets the floor, 40-hour workweek before overtime, no required holiday premium. A state can add to that floor: California adds daily overtime after 8 hours, Rhode Island still requires 1.5× on Sundays and the eight statutory holidays for retail and a few other categories. A city can add more. On top of that, your contract or CBA can be more generous than the law but never less. So when you ask "what should I be paid", the answer is the highest of federal, state, local, and contractual rules, not the lowest. UK statute does not require any bank-holiday premium at all; the headline 28 days of paid leave is the statutory floor, and any extra pay for working a bank holiday is contractual.
Time-and-a-half on the major holidays is genuinely widespread in US private-sector payroll, but it is policy, not law, and the law does not force the issue for most workers. Massachusetts is the cleanest example: its retail Sunday and holiday 1.5× premium was phased out under the 2018 Grand Bargain and ended on 1 January 2023, so workers who used to get a statutory uplift now get only whatever their employer chose to keep. The lesson is to read the handbook, not assume your friend's payslip looks like yours. Pair this with the working days calculator if you need to plan an upcoming pay period across multiple holidays.
When might you need a lawyer? If you are routinely paid less than this statutory floor, if your employer reclassifies you as exempt to avoid overtime, or if a CBA premium is being skipped, that is wage-and-hour territory worth escalating, to a US employment attorney or your state DOL, or in the UK an employment solicitor or ACAS.