Holiday pay in Florida splits sharply along one line: state employees get paid time off on nine specific holidays by law, while private employers have no legal obligation to provide holiday pay, premium pay, or even a day off. Whatever holiday benefits you receive from a private employer come from your employment contract, the company handbook, or a collective bargaining agreement, not from Florida statute.
Private Employers Are Not Required To Pay for Holidays
No Florida law requires a private employer to give you a paid holiday, pay you extra for working one, or close on any state or federal holiday. Holiday pay in the private sector is a matter of agreement between you and your employer.1U.S. Department of Labor. Holiday Pay
Many Florida employers do offer holiday benefits voluntarily to compete for workers. Common setups include a fixed number of paid holidays per year, time-and-a-half or double time for holiday shifts, and floating holidays employees can spend as they choose. None of that is required. If your handbook is silent on holiday pay, you have no statutory claim to it.
Florida’s minimum wage reached $15.00 per hour in 2026 under Amendment 2. That rate applies whether or not the shift falls on a holiday. There is no separate holiday minimum wage.
Paid Holidays for Florida State Employees
Under § 110.117, every state branch and agency must observe nine paid holidays:
- New Year’s Day
- Birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. (third Monday in January)
- Memorial Day
- Independence Day
- Labor Day
- Veterans’ Day (November 11)
- Thanksgiving Day
- The Friday after Thanksgiving
- Christmas Day
When one of these lands on a Saturday, the preceding Friday is observed. When it lands on a Sunday, the following Monday is observed. Full-time state employees also receive one personal holiday per year, credited on July 1 and available through June 30 of the following year. Part-time employees receive a prorated personal holiday based on their scheduled hours.2Online Sunshine. Florida Statutes 110.117 – Paid Holidays
Eligibility and How the Hours Are Credited
To qualify for holiday pay, a state employee must be in pay status — actively working or on approved paid leave — for at least part of the workday before the holiday. Calling in sick without approved leave the day before a holiday can cost you the holiday pay.
Full-time employees who are not required to work on a holiday receive credit for the hours in their established workday, with a minimum of eight hours. If the holiday falls on a scheduled day off, the employee still receives an eight-hour holiday credit. Part-time employees calculate their holiday hours by multiplying 8 by their weekly hours and dividing by 40, so a 20-hour-per-week employee earns 4 hours of holiday credit.3Cornell Law School – Legal Information Institute. Fla Admin Code Ann R 60L-34.0032 – Holidays
State Employees Required To Work
Career service employees required to work on a holiday earn special compensatory leave equal to the time worked, up to the hours in their established workday. Senior management and selected exempt service employees who cannot observe the holiday may take an alternate day off in the same work period, but they do not earn special compensatory leave if they miss the holiday entirely.3Cornell Law School – Legal Information Institute. Fla Admin Code Ann R 60L-34.0032 – Holidays
How Holidays Affect Overtime
Federal law is the only overtime law that applies in Florida. The Fair Labor Standards Act requires overtime at one-and-a-half times the regular rate for non-exempt employees who work more than 40 hours in a workweek. Paid holiday hours where you did not actually work do not count as “hours worked” for that 40-hour threshold.4U.S. Department of Labor. FLSA Hours Worked Advisor – Holidays, Vacations and Sick Time
An example: your employer gives you Thanksgiving off with eight hours of holiday pay. You then work Monday through Wednesday and Friday through Saturday, for 40 actual hours. Your paycheck shows 48 hours, but only 40 are hours worked, and no overtime is owed. Employees often expect overtime based on total paid hours and are surprised when the math is done the other way.
Holiday Premium Pay
When an employer pays a true premium for working a holiday — an amount clearly above the normal rate and designated as holiday premium — that premium portion can be excluded from the regular rate used to calculate overtime. The FLSA treats real holiday premiums the same way it treats overtime premiums under Section 7(e)(6).5eCFR. 29 CFR 778.219 – Pay for Idle Time and Payment of Premium Pay
If an employer just pays a higher flat hourly rate on holidays without structuring it as a premium above the normal rate, that higher rate can be folded into the regular rate calculation and raise the overtime figure for the week. The label and the structure matter, not only the dollar amount.6U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 23 – Overtime Pay Requirements of the FLSA
Federal Service Contractors: A Private-Sector Exception
Employees of companies holding covered federal service contracts have holiday rights that most private-sector workers do not. The McNamara-O’Hara Service Contract Act requires employers with covered federal contracts exceeding $2,500 to pay prevailing wages and provide fringe benefits, which typically include paid holidays, based on Department of Labor wage determinations for the locality.7eCFR. Subpart C – Application of the McNamara-O’Hara Service Contract Act
If your employer provides services to a federal agency in Florida — janitorial, security, food service, IT support — the contract’s fringe benefit obligations may legally require paid holidays. The specific holidays and rates come from the wage determination attached to the contract, not from a fixed federal list.
Religious Holiday Accommodations
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act requires employers to make reasonable accommodations for sincerely held religious beliefs that conflict with work schedules, including religious holidays. Typical accommodations include flexible scheduling, shift swaps, and unpaid or personal leave for observance.8U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Fact Sheet – Religious Accommodations in the Workplace
The bar for refusing an accommodation shifted in 2023. In Groff v. DeJoy, the Supreme Court held that an employer must show “substantial increased costs in relation to the conduct of its particular business” to deny a religious accommodation, replacing the older “more than de minimis cost” standard.9Supreme Court of the United States. Groff v DeJoy, 600 US 447 (2023) For a Florida worker observing a religious holiday not on the state calendar, a blanket refusal without any real analysis of cost is unlikely to hold up. Roles where staffing on a particular day is genuinely critical give employers a stronger argument, but the employer has to engage with the request rather than reject it out of hand.
Union Contracts
Collective bargaining agreements often provide holiday protections that go past what Florida law requires: guaranteed paid holidays, premium rates for holiday work, compensatory time off, and limits on mandatory holiday scheduling. These terms are enforceable as contract obligations. For state workers, a collective bargaining agreement interacts with § 110.117, and where a dispute arises the contract terms generally control. Employers cannot unilaterally override negotiated holiday provisions.2Online Sunshine. Florida Statutes 110.117 – Paid Holidays
Refusing a Holiday Shift
Florida is an at-will state, and refusing to work a scheduled holiday shift is not protected activity under Florida law. Florida does not recognize a public policy exception to at-will employment, so the usual carve-outs some states apply do not exist here. Federal protections still apply: an employer cannot fire you based on race, sex, age, disability, national origin, religion, or pregnancy, and retaliation for reporting discrimination or filing a workers’ compensation claim is unlawful. Outside those protections, declining a holiday shift gives an employer legal grounds to terminate you. If holiday work is a dealbreaker, put the exemption in your written employment agreement.
The State’s Legal Holiday List Is Not the Same as Paid Time Off
Chapter 683 of the Florida Statutes designates more than 20 legal holidays, including New Year’s Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Veterans’ Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Good Friday, Flag Day, General Election Day, and others. Every Sunday is also a legal holiday under the statute.10Florida Senate. Florida Statutes 683.01 – Legal Holidays Juneteenth is designated separately under § 683.21 as a special observance rather than listed among the § 683.01 legal holidays, and it is not one of the paid holidays for state employees.11Online Sunshine. Florida Statutes 683.21 – Juneteenth Day
Being on the legal holiday list does not entitle any worker to a day off or extra pay. That designation affects government operations, court deadlines, and certain commercial transactions. The paid holidays that most workers care about come from § 110.117 for state employees and from private agreements for everyone else.