Arkansas Holiday Pay Laws: State Employee Rules and Eligibility

Arkansas holiday pay laws guarantee 11 paid holidays only to state government employees. If you work for a private employer in Arkansas, no state or federal law requires paid holidays, premium pay for holiday shifts, or time-and-a-half for working on a holiday. Whether you get anything at all depends on your employer’s policy, handbook, or contract.

Private Sector Holiday Pay

Arkansas has no statute requiring private employers to offer paid holidays or extra pay for working on one. The federal Fair Labor Standards Act does not either. The U.S. Department of Labor treats holiday benefits as “generally a matter of agreement between an employer and an employee (or the employee’s representative).”¹

That means your rights come from what your employer promised, not from state law. Check your offer letter, employee handbook, or union contract. Many Arkansas employers do offer paid holidays or premium rates voluntarily, but those benefits are discretionary and can be changed unless a contract locks them in.

One federal rule does apply on holidays: overtime. Hours you work on a holiday count toward your 40-hour workweek. If holiday work pushes you past 40 hours in that week, you are owed one-and-a-half times your regular rate for the excess hours, the same as any other day.² The holiday itself does not trigger premium pay under federal law; only crossing 40 hours does.

The 11 Paid Holidays for State Employees

Arkansas Code 1-5-101 designates 11 official paid holidays for state government workers:³

New Year’s Day, January 1
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Birthday, third Monday in January
George Washington’s Birthday and Daisy Gatson Bates Day, third Monday in February
Memorial Day, last Monday in May
Independence Day, July 4
Labor Day, first Monday in September
Veterans Day, November 11
Thanksgiving Day, fourth Thursday in November
Christmas Eve, December 24
Christmas Day, December 25
The employee’s own birthday, a floating holiday

The birthday holiday is the one that surprises people. It is a full paid day off to observe your own birthday, in addition to the ten fixed dates. When any of the fixed holidays falls on a Saturday, state employees observe it on the preceding Friday; when it falls on a Sunday, the following Monday.³

State Employee Eligibility Rules

To get holiday pay, a state employee must be on pay status both on the last scheduled workday before the holiday and the first scheduled workday after it.⁴ Pay status means actively working or on approved paid leave. Take unpaid leave on either of those bookend days and you forfeit the holiday.

This is the rule that trips people up most often. Calling in without approved leave the day before or after a holiday can cost you the paid day entirely, so any time-off request around a holiday needs to cover both sides.

When a holiday falls in the middle of approved annual or sick leave, it is charged as a holiday and not deducted from your leave balance.⁴ A week of vacation that includes Thanksgiving uses four days of annual leave, not five.

If an official holiday lands on your regularly scheduled day off, you are entitled to equivalent time off on another day.⁴ Compressed schedules and rotating days off do not cost you the benefit.

Working on a Holiday as a State Employee

Agency and department directors decide when operational needs require employees to work on a holiday.⁴ If you are required to work, the statute does not give you premium pay. The remedy is a compensatory day off at a later date, taken at a time approved by your supervisor and scheduled as soon as practical. There is no time-and-a-half for holiday work under state law; the trade is time for time.

Unused Holiday Time When You Leave

When a state employee resigns, retires, is terminated, or dies, accrued unused annual leave can be paid out as a lump sum. Regular state employees can receive up to 30 working days (240 hours), and the cap includes any unused holiday or birthday time. Certain designated employees, including fire and emergency service workers at the State Military Department and critical-need employees, can receive up to 45 working days (360 hours).⁵

Sick leave is not paid out. Unused compensatory time, though, must be paid by the separating agency in a lump sum.⁵ If you worked a holiday and never used the substitute day, that time belongs in your final check.

Time Off for Religious Holidays

Time off for a religious holiday runs on a separate track and applies to both state and private employees. Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, employers with 15 or more employees must provide reasonable accommodations for sincerely held religious beliefs that conflict with a work schedule, unless doing so imposes a substantial burden on the business.⁶

Scheduling flexibility for religious observances is one of the most common accommodations the EEOC recognizes. No formal written request is required; the EEOC says there are “no magic words required” to start the process. You just need to make your employer aware that you need the time off for a religious observance.⁶

After the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Groff v. DeJoy, the bar for denying a religious accommodation is high. An employer must show substantial increased costs in the context of its particular operations. Coworker complaints based on hostility to religion or to the idea of accommodating religious practice do not count as undue hardship.

1
U.S. Department of Labor. Holiday Pay
2
U.S. Department of Labor. Overtime Pay
3
Justia. Arkansas Code 1-5-101 – Official Holidays
4
Justia. Arkansas Code 1-5-104 – Entitlement to Paid Holiday or Equivalent Time
5
Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration. OPM Policy 54 – Leave Transfer and Leave Payout
6
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Fact Sheet – Religious Accommodations in the Workplace