The Small Business Owner’s List of Federal Holidays 2025

When you are running a small business, whether it is a restaurant or a recreation park, sometimes holidays will be the prime day for your business. This means you can’t just give time off to your employees on a list of federal holidays as it may affect your revenues. So the question is — which holidays should you give off to your employees?

Even though the Federal Government recognizes 11 paid holidays to their employees each year, there is no Federal law for private employers that requires them to provide paid or unpaid time off on nationally recognized holidays. So the federal holidays are not automatically time offs and they can be typically considered as regular workdays.

But to keep your employees satisfied and productive at work, it’s better to develop a paid-time-off policy for your payroll process that should be based on the needs of your business and employees and by following the list of Federal, state, and local holidays.

List of Federal Holidays

The federal holidays falling on Saturdays will be observed on the preceding Friday for pay and leave purposes. Similarly, the federal holidays falling on Sundays will be observed on the following Mondays for pay and leave purposes.

Bank holidays are the same as federal holidays because they follow the holiday calendar issued by the U.S. Federal Reserve.

CheckMark, Inc. assumes no liability and makes no warranties on or for the information offered in this post, as it is intended for only informational purposes. Consult your advisor or legal counsel for more information on Federal Holidays and developing a paid-time-off policy.