How Many Working Days Are in a Year? (2025 & 2026)

A working day is a standard weekday — Monday through Friday — when most full-time jobs expect you to be on the clock. It is different from a calendar day (every day of the year) and slightly different from a business day, the term banks, courts and shipping companies use for processing times. For payroll and planning, the working-day count is what turns an annual salary into a daily rate, sets how much a day of unpaid leave costs, and frames how much paid time off you actually get.

How many working days are in 2025 and 2026?

Both 2025 and 2026 have 365 calendar days and 261 weekdays. Once you subtract the 11 US federal holidays, the typical employee works around 250 days — the exact figure shifts a little each year because some holidays land on a weekend.

How to count working days yourself

You can get the weekday count without a calendar in just a few steps.

1. Start with 52 full weeks × 5 weekdays = 260 working days — the baseline for any year.
2. Add the leftover days. A 365-day year is 52 weeks plus 1 extra day; a 366-day leap year has 2 extra days. Count how many of those leftover days fall on a weekday.
3. For 2025 the extra day is a Wednesday and for 2026 it is a Thursday, so each adds 1 weekday — giving 261 weekdays.
4. Subtract the holidays your employer observes (11 federal holidays is the common US default) to reach your net working days, usually around 250.

Working days vs. work hours (2,080 vs 2,088)

These two numbers are easy to mix up. Payroll commonly uses 2,080 work hours a year — that is exactly 260 days × 8 hours, the round 52 × 5 × 8 figure. But the real weekday count is 261 in 2025 and 2026, which works out to 2,088 hours. The 2,080 standard keeps biweekly pay periods even (26 periods × 80 hours), while 2,088 reflects the actual calendar.

Why working days matter for your pay

• Daily rate: divide your annual salary by your working days (≈250) to see what one day of work is worth — useful for unpaid leave or partial months.
• Prorated and part-time pay: a mid-year start or a 4-day week is calculated against the working-day total, not calendar days.
• Paid time off: PTO and holidays are carved out of the same 261 weekdays, so more observed holidays mean fewer days actually worked for the same salary.
• Contracting: day-rate contractors price their year around ~250 billable working days minus their own time off.

If you need to count working days between two specific dates — a project deadline or a notice period — a business-day calculator handles the weekend math for you.

US federal holidays

There are 11 US federal holidays. Most employers observe them, though private companies are not legally required to, and some fall on weekends in any given year.

• New Year's Day (January 1)
• Birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. (third Monday in January)
• Washington's Birthday / Presidents' Day (third Monday in February)
• Memorial Day (last Monday in May)
• Juneteenth National Independence Day (June 19)
• Independence Day (July 4)
• Labor Day (first Monday in September)
• Columbus Day (second Monday in October)
• Veterans Day (November 11)
• Thanksgiving Day (fourth Thursday in November)
• Christmas Day (December 25)