Business Days Calculator
Working days between two dates, or the date a number of business days away. US federal holidays are worked out from the rules that create them, so any year answers correctly — and the weekend observance shift, which most calculators miss, is applied.
Dates and working week
Counted as a working day if it falls on one — a job running Monday through Friday takes five.
Counted too. Both ends of the range are included.
Federal only, and computed from the statute rather than a table, so any year works. Many private employers work Columbus Day and Veterans Day — count them if yours does.
January 1, 2026 through March 31, 2026, both included, is 90 calendar days. 26 of those fall outside your working week (Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri), and it holds 3 federal holidays — 3 deducted from the count.
- Business days
- 61
- Calendar days
- 90
- Non-working weekdays
- 26
- Holidays deducted
- 3
- Start date
- January 1, 2026
- End date
- March 31, 2026
| Holiday | Observed | Statutory date | Deducted |
|---|---|---|---|
| New Year's Day | January 1, 2026 | Same day | Yes |
| Birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. | January 19, 2026 | Same day | Yes |
| Washington's Birthday | February 16, 2026 | Same day | Yes |
Eleven rules, not a list of dates — and the shift that decides the answer
Almost every business-day calculator on the web carries a hard-coded table of holiday dates, usually covering the three or four years around whenever it was written. Ask one about 2031 and it either drops the holidays silently or stops answering. That is avoidable, because federal holidays are not arbitrary dates. 5 U.S.C. § 6103 states each one as a rule, and a rule evaluated for a year is correct in every year.
Jan 1 • 3rd Mon Jan • 3rd Mon Feb • last Mon May • Jun 19 • Jul 4 • 1st Mon Sep • 2nd Mon Oct • Nov 11 • 4th Thu Nov • Dec 25- Fixed-date holidays
- New Year’s Day, Juneteenth, Independence Day, Veterans Day, Christmas Day — the five that can land on a weekend
- Weekday holidays
- Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, Washington’s Birthday, Memorial Day, Labor Day, Columbus Day, Thanksgiving — always a Monday or a Thursday, so never shifted
- Observance shift
- Saturday → the Friday before; Sunday → the Monday after (Executive Order 11582)
- Juneteenth
- Only from 2021. A range in 2020 that skips 19 June is reading from a copied table
The shift is where the answers actually diverge. Roughly two fixed holidays a year land on a weekend, and each one moves an office closure onto a working day that would otherwise have been ordinary. It also crosses the year boundary: 1 January 2022 fell on a Saturday, which made Friday 31 December 2021 a federal holiday — a date that no rule for 2021 produces, and one that a year-at-a-time lookup misses every time.
The names used in the results are the ones the OPMpublishes, not the colloquial ones. “Washington’s Birthday” is what the statute says; “Presidents’ Day” has never appeared in federal law, and several states use that name for a holiday of their own on a different day.
1 January to 31 March 2026: 90 days, 61 of them working
January, February, and March 2026 are 31 + 28 + 31 = 90 calendar days. 1 January 2026 is a Thursday, and 90 days from a Thursday covers 13 Saturdays and 13 Sundays, so 26 days fall outside a Monday-to-Friday week and 64 weekdays remain.
Three federal holidays land in the quarter, and all three fall on weekdays: New Year’s Day on Thursday 1 January, Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday on the third Monday, 19 January, and Washington’s Birthday on the third Monday of February, the 16th. None needs the observance shift. So the quarter holds 64 − 3 = 61 business days.
Now move the window to summer and the shift starts to matter. From Monday 29 June to Friday 10 July 2026 is 12 calendar days and 10 weekdays. Independence Day, 4 July, is a Saturday that year — so the federal day off is Friday 3 July, and the span holds 9 business days. A calculator that removes 4 July itself removes a Saturday nobody was working and reports 10, which is one day wrong for every deadline counted through that week.
The same 1 January start, asked the other way: ten business days on from Thursday 1 January 2026 lands on Thursday 15 January. Counting begins the day after the start, passes four weekend days, and reaches no holiday — MLK Day on the 19th is beyond it.
What this calculator assumes
- US federal holidays only.No state, municipal, bank, court, school, or religious holidays, and no other country. Massachusetts closes for Patriots’ Day and the stock exchange for Good Friday; neither is federal.
- Federal is not the same as universal in the other direction either. Many private employers work Columbus Day and Veterans Day, and the Federal Reserve’s published holiday list is not identical to this one.
- Both dates are treated as plain calendar dates and compared in UTC, so no time zone or daylight saving change shifts a result.
- “Days between” includes both ends of the range; “add business days” treats the start as day zero and counts from the following day.
- Whole days only. Half-days, early closes the day before a holiday, and company floating days are not modelled.
- Dates from 1978 through 2200. Before 1978 the federal schedule was different — see the FAQ on Veterans Day.
- A holiday is only deducted when it lands on a weekday you count as working. Turn Monday off and a Monday holiday costs you nothing, which is what the Deducted column reports.
Business days calculator FAQ
How many business days are there in 2026?
250, on a Monday-to-Friday week with all eleven US federal holidays taken off. 2026 has 365 days, of which 104 are Saturdays and Sundays, leaving 261 weekdays. Every one of the eleven federal holidays lands on a weekday in 2026 — Independence Day falls on a Saturday, but it is then observed on Friday 3 July, so it still costs a working day — and 261 minus 11 is 250. Set the range to 1 January through 31 December above to see the list.
What happens when a holiday falls on a weekend?
A federal holiday on a Saturday is observed the Friday before, and one on a Sunday the Monday after. That has been the rule for federal employees since Executive Order 11582 in 1971, and most private employers follow it. It matters more than it sounds: 4 July 2026 is a Saturday, so the day off is Friday 3 July. A calculator that only knows the statutory date removes a day that was already a weekend and gives you one working day too many.
Does the start date count as a business day?
In “days between dates” mode, yes — both dates you type are included, so Monday to Friday is five working days, which is how a job scheduled Monday through Friday is quoted. In “add business days” mode, no: the start date is day zero, the day you are standing on, and counting begins the day after. One business day after a Friday is the following Monday. The two are consistent — the date N business days after a start is the (N+1)th working day of the inclusive range.
Are state holidays included?
No. This is the federal schedule only, and that is a real limitation rather than an oversight. Patriots' Day closes offices in Massachusetts and Maine, Cesar Chavez Day in California, Emancipation Day in the District of Columbia — and none of them is federal. It also runs the other way: many private employers work Columbus Day and Veterans Day, and the New York Stock Exchange closes on Good Friday, which is not a federal holiday at all. Use the holiday toggle and the working-week selector to describe the calendar you actually keep.
Why does this calculator refuse dates before 1978?
Because the rules it applies were not yet the law. The Uniform Monday Holiday Act moved four holidays to fixed Mondays from 1971, and one of those moves was reversed: Veterans Day spent 1971 through 1977 on the fourth Monday in October before returning to 11 November in 1978. Answering for 1975 with today's rules would produce a confident number that no calendar of the time agrees with, so the floor is 1978 — after which the only change has been Juneteenth arriving in 2021.
Can I count a six-day week, or a week that starts on Sunday?
Yes. The day buttons set which weekdays count as working days, and nothing in the arithmetic assumes Monday to Friday. Turn Saturday on for a six-day operation, or switch to Sunday through Thursday for the working week kept in much of the Middle East. Holidays are still deducted only when they land on a day you work — a Monday holiday costs nothing to someone who never works Mondays, and the table shows exactly which ones were deducted.
Sources and review notes
- US Office of Personnel Management, Federal Holidays — the official list, the official names, and the observed dates year by year
- 5 U.S.C. § 6103 — the statute that states each holiday as a rule, which is what this calculator evaluates
- Executive Order 11582 (1971) — the weekend observance shift: Saturday to the preceding Friday, Sunday to the following Monday
- S.475, Juneteenth National Independence Day Act — signed 17 June 2021, which is why no earlier year has this holiday
There is no holiday table on this page to go stale. The rules above are evaluated for whichever year you ask about, so a range in 2045 is answered on the same footing as one in 2026. If Congress adds a twelfth federal holiday, that is the one change that would need making here.