Holiday entitlement calculator

This calculator gives the legal floor for the country you pick, then adjusts it for how many days a week you work and for a part-year start or finish, returning the paid annual leave you are entitled to as a minimum. The key idea, and the one that clears up most confusion, is that the law usually sets holiday as a number of weeks, not a fixed pile of days. In the United Kingdom the entitlement is 5.6 weeks. For someone working the standard five-day week that comes to 28 days, but the weeks are what the statute fixes, so the day count moves with the working pattern: 5.6 weeks of a three-day week is 16.8 days, not 28. Work out the days by multiplying the statutory weeks by the days you work each week, and the arithmetic falls out cleanly. The United Kingdom then adds one wrinkle, a cap: the statutory figure is limited to 28 days, so someone on a six-day week does not climb past 28 even though 5.6 times six would be 33.6. Elsewhere in Europe the floor is set by the European Working Time Directive at four weeks, which is 20 days on a five-day week, and many countries choose to go above it. France gives five weeks, Austria, Sweden and Denmark give five, while Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Australia and New Zealand sit at four. The gap at the other end is the striking one: the United States sets no federal statutory minimum at all, so paid vacation there is whatever an employer chooses to offer, and plenty offer little in the early years. Canada starts at two weeks federally and rises with service, and Japan begins at ten days after six months and climbs to twenty with tenure. Presenting these on the same screen makes the point that a right most people assume is universal is anything but. A crucial detail that changes the real total is how public holidays are treated, and the rule is not the same everywhere. In most of continental Europe, statutory paid annual leave is separate from public holidays, so a German or French worker gets their four or five weeks of annual leave and the public holidays on top. The United Kingdom is the outlier here: its 5.6 weeks was set deliberately so that the eight bank holidays can be counted inside the 28 days, and many employers do exactly that, which is why a UK contract offering "20 days plus bank holidays" is really meeting the 28-day statutory floor by another route. This calculator reports the statutory leave figure and flags the public-holiday treatment in its note, but you should always check your own contract to see whether public holidays are inside or on top, because it makes a week and a half of difference. Part-year working is the other adjustment the tool handles. If you start or leave partway through the leave year, you earn holiday in proportion to the part of the year you are there: six months of a 28-day entitlement is 14 days. New starters accrue leave through their first year rather than getting the full allowance on day one in many systems, and leavers are owed pay for any statutory holiday they have accrued but not taken. The months box lets you pro-rate for exactly this. What the calculator gives is a floor, not a forecast of what you will actually receive, and several things sit above or beside it. A contract can always be more generous than the statutory minimum, and many are, offering 25 or 30 days before public holidays; where the contract is better, the contract wins. Some countries increase the statutory minimum with length of service or age, such as Austria moving to six weeks after 25 years, and this tool shows the base figure rather than every tenure step. Part-time workers are entitled to the same proportion as full-timers and must not be treated less favourably, which is exactly what scaling by days per week captures. And the figure is paid leave: unpaid leave, sick leave, parental leave and public holidays are separate entitlements with their own rules. Reach for this when weighing a job in another country, when checking that a contract meets the local legal minimum, when working out the leave a part-time or newly started role should give, or when planning how much paid time off you can actually take. Pick the country, set the days you work each week, and adjust the months if you are not there for the full leave year, and the result is the statutory paid holiday you are owed as a minimum.

How it works

1. Choose the country whose law applies to the job.
2. Enter how many days a week you work, since statutory holiday is set in weeks and the days follow your pattern.
3. Leave the months at 12 for a full leave year, or lower it to pro-rate a part-year start or finish.
4. The calculator multiplies the statutory weeks by your days per week, applying any legal cap such as the UK 28-day limit.
5. It shows the statutory days you are owed, the number of weeks the law sets, and the full-time comparison.

Statutory minimum paid annual leave, five-day week

Key facts

• The law usually sets holiday in weeks, so the number of days depends on how many days a week you work.
• The EU Working Time Directive sets a floor of four weeks; the United Kingdom gives 5.6 weeks capped at 28 days.
• Continental Europe counts public holidays on top of annual leave; the UK figure can include the eight bank holidays.
• The United States has no federal statutory minimum, so paid vacation is whatever an employer offers.

Tips

• Check whether your contract counts public holidays inside or on top of the figure, since it is worth over a week.
• Enter your real days per week rather than assuming five; part-time leave scales with the pattern.
• For a mid-year start or leave, lower the months to see the leave you actually accrue.
• Treat the result as the legal minimum and compare it against your contract, which may be more generous.

Frequently asked questions

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