Minimum payroll frequencies are determined by each state and can be quite confusing. I’m often asked “How often do I have to pay my employees” during a Certified Payroll Training Webinar. State minimum paycheck frequencies are shown below – this information comes directly from the U.S. Department of Labor’s website.
It’s difficult to thoroughly cover the requirements of all 50 states in a 2 hour webinar, but it has crossed my mind that a series of blog posts on the differences between what State Laws are for how often payroll must be generated and how that can effect the generation of a certified payroll report would be a good thing to do. While I could have simply started this series and talked about the complexities of generating certified payroll reports when issuing employee payroll on anything other than a weekly basis – I first wanted to display the requirements by state, rather than just put off a link to the U.S. Department of Labor website.
Under the Federal Davis-Bacon and related Acts; contractors and subcontractors performing work on Federal or Federally-aided construction-type contracts are required to submit weekly payrolls. The Copeland Act provides further/clearer requirements; indicating that contractors and subcontractors performing work on Federally financed or assisted construction contracts “furnish weekly a statement with respect to the wages paid to each employee during the preceding week”.
Obviously, contractors and subcontractors who issue their payroll on a weekly basis find the necessary information easier to obtain; therefore, making compliance simpler to obtain.
State |
Weekly |
Bi-Weekly |
Semi-Monthly |
Monthly |
| Alaska | X | X | ||
| Arizona | X 3 | |||
| Arkansas | X | |||
| California | X 9 | X 9 | X | |
| Colorado | X | |||
| Connecticut | X 4 | |||
| Delaware | X | |||
| District of Columbia | X | |||
| Georgia | X | |||
| Hawaii | X | X 5 | ||
| Idaho | X | |||
| Illinois | X | X 2 | ||
| Indiana | X | |||
| Iowa | X | X 6 | X | X |
| Kansas | X | |||
| Kentucky | X | |||
| Louisiana | X | X 7 | ||
| Maine | X 8 | |||
| Maryland | X | |||
| Massachusetts | X | X | ||
| Michigan 9 | X | X | X | |
| Minnesota | X 10 | |||
| Mississippi | X 11 | X 11 | ||
| Missouri | X | |||
| Montana 12 | ||||
| Nebraska 13 | ||||
| Nevada | X | X 2 | ||
| New Hampshire | X | |||
| New Jersey | X | |||
| New Mexico | X | X 2 | ||
| New York | X 14 | X 14 | ||
| North Carolina 15 | ||||
| North Dakota | X | |||
| Ohio | X | |||
| Oklahoma | X | |||
| Oregon | X | |||
| Pennsylvania 13 | ||||
| Rhode Island | X 16 | |||
| South Dakota | X | |||
| Tennessee | X | |||
| Texas | X | X 17 | ||
| Utah | X 18 | |||
| Vermont | X | X 19 | X 19 | |
| Virginia | X 20 | X 20 | X 2 | |
| Washington | X | |||
| West Virginia | X | |||
| Wisconsin | X | |||
| Wyoming | X |
- Alabama and South Carolina – No regulations or not specified.
- Illinois, Nevada, New Mexico and Virginia – Monthly payday requirements for Executive, Administrative, and Professional personnel.
- Arizona – Payday two or more days in a month, not more than 16 days apart.
- Connecticut – Longer interval (up to monthly) permitted if approved by Labor Commissioner.
- Hawaii – Employees may choose to be paid on a monthly basis under special election procedure. Director of Labor and Industrial Relations also may grant exceptions to the general semi-monthly payday requirement. Payday requirement applies only to private sector employment.
- Iowa – Any predictable and reliable pay schedule is permitted as long as employees get paid at least monthly and no later than 12 days {excluding Sundays and legal holidays} from the end of the period when the wages were earned. This can be waived by written agreement; employees on commission have different requirements.
- Louisiana – Applicable to entities engaged in manufacturing, mining, or boring for oil, employing 10 or more employees, and to every public service corporation. Payment is required once every two weeks or twice during each calendar month.
- Maine – Payment due at regular intervals not to exceed 16 days.
- California and Michigan – Frequency of payday depends on the occupation.
- Minnesota – Employees engaged in transitory employment, i.e. migrant workers, which require and employee to change the employee’s pace of abode, because the employment is terminated wither by the completion of the work or by the discharge or quitting of the employee must be paid within 24 hours.
- Mississippi – Applicable to every entity engaged in manufacturing of any kind in the State, employing 50 or more employees and employing public labor, and to every public service corporation doing business in the State. Payment is required once every two weeks or twice during each calendar month.
- Montana – Wages must be paid within 10 business days after the wages are due and payable.
- Nebraska and Pennsylvania – Payday designated by employer.
- New York – Weekly payday for manual workers. Semi-monthly payday upon approval for manual workers and for clerical and other workers.
- North Carolina – None specified, pay periods may be daily, weekly, bi-weekly, semi-monthly or monthly.
- Rhode Island – Childcare providers shall have the option to be paid every two weeks.
- Texas – Monthly payday for employees exempt from overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act.
- Utah – Payments are to be paid at regular intervals but in periods no longer than semi-monthly.
- Vermont – Employers may implement bi-weekly and semi-monthly payday with written notice
- Virginia – Employees whose weekly wages total more than 150% of the average weekly wage of the Commonwealth may be paid monthly, upon agreement of each affected employee.
NOTE: South Carolina – Employers with 5 or more employees are required to give written notice at the time of hiring to all employees advising them of their wages agreed upon, and the time and place of payment along with their expected hours of work. The employer must pay on the normal time and at the place of payment established by the employer.
Stay tuned over the next week to find out some of the problems that can occur when a company follows various state payroll requirements {bi-weekly, semi-monthly, and monthly paychecks} and how the pay frequencies affect the submission of their certified payroll reports.
Payroll and holiday pay can be confusing and overwhelming and here we are right at the height of the upcoming holiday season! I found these great tips from HR Matters and wanted to share them with you. These tips provide answers to common questions such as: Do you have to provide paid holidays? What about for new employees? Do you have to pay overtime to employees who have to work on a holiday?
We’re officially heading into the holiday season with Thanksgiving coming up next week and Christmas and the New Year just around the corner. If you are like most employers, you may be dealing with holiday pay issues. To help you out, the HR Matters E-Tips Editors have put together the top seven holiday questions that they answer on a regular basis. (You also can find the answers to these and many more holiday questions in the HR Matters Tools and Resource Center online, Policy Manual, Holidays, Chapter 503.)
1. Do we have to provide paid holidays?
Absent a collective bargaining agreement or other contract providing paid holidays, federal law does not require you to pay nonexempt employees for holidays that they do not work. Most organizations offer a limited number of paid holidays to create employee goodwill. According to the Society for Human Resource Management 2011 Benefits Survey, 97% of responding employers provide paid holidays to their employees.
Note, however, that if you do not provide paid days off for holidays, you should pay exempt employees for any holidays that your organization is closed. (As a reminder, the Department of Labor (DOL) regulations implementing the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) provide that the following categories of employees are exempt from the overtime and minimum wage requirements of the FLSA: (1) bona fide administrative, executive, or professional employees; (2) workers employed in outside sales; (3) highly skilled computer-related employees; and (4) certain “highly-compensated” employees.)
Although the DOL regulations implementing the FLSA do not specifically address unpaid holidays, they do provide that an employee will not be considered paid “on a salary basis” if deductions are made “for absences occasioned by the employer or by the operating requirements of the business.” Unpaid holidays generally are considered the type of absence “occasioned by the employer.” According to a DOL Wage & Hour Opinion Letter dated 5/27/99, the DOL indicated that an employee will not be considered to be paid on a salary basis if deductions from the employee’s predetermined compensation are made for absences occasioned by the employer, such as being closed on certain holidays, or the operating requirements of the business. Further, the regulations recognize only a limited number of instances when an employer may make deductions (or “dock”) for absences of a full day or more without jeopardizing the exemption and thus incurring overtime liability. But, holidays do not fall under any of those exceptions.
2. Can we require employees to complete an introductory period before becoming eligible for holiday pay?
You most likely can exclude new nonexempt employees from holiday pay. If there is no collective bargaining agreement or other contract specifying that new employees are eligible for holiday pay, then it is up to your organization’s policy. Many employers exclude new employees from certain benefits granted to longer-term employees until completion of the introductory period.
However, new exempt employees should not be covered by this policy and should receive pay for holidays. As explained in # 1, above, if you do not pay exempt employees, new or old, for holidays they do not work, you may jeopardize their exempt status.
3. Can we require employees to work on holidays?
Since paid holidays are a discretionary benefit, you may require employees to work holidays according to the operating needs of the organization (and assuming no collective bargaining agreement or other contract prohibits this work). We recommend that employers’ holiday policies should include language that indicates employees may be required to work on holidays. For example, our HR Matters Tools and Resource Center, Policy Manual, includes the following provision in the model Holiday policy in Chapter 503: “The Company may schedule work on an observed holiday as it considers necessary. Normally, work on an observed holiday will be paid as if the day were a regularly scheduled work day. Employees will be given the option of receiving additional pay for the day or a “floating” holiday that may be taken, with the prior approval of their supervisor, at another time during the year.”
Note that you generally are not required to pay nonexempt employees for time and one-half for holiday work unless the employee has already worked 40 hours in the week (see # 4, below) or to provide a paid floating holiday at a later point. However, the model policy provides these extra benefits in recognition of the extra burden for employees who work on holidays.
4. Do we owe nonexempt employees overtime if they work on holidays?
The FLSA requires you to pay overtime to nonexempt employees at time and one-half their regular rate of pay for all hours actually worked over 40 in a single workweek. Accordingly, you will owe nonexempt employees who work on holidays overtime only if the employees end up working more than 40 hours because they are working on the holiday.
So, for example, if an employee has worked four 10-hour days (40 hours) and then works on a designated holiday that same week, then the employee should receive overtime for all of the holiday work hours. But, if the employee works four 8-hour days (32 hours) and then works an additional eight hours on the holiday, for a total of 40 hours worked in the week, then that employee is not entitled to overtime for the holiday work hours. (Note, however, that a limited number of states, such as Rhode Island, require payment of at least time and one-half for employees who work on certain holidays, so be sure to check state law, too.)
As an aside, if you voluntarily pay a premium of time and one-half (the equivalent of overtime) for work on a holiday, the FLSA regulations generally allow you to credit this extra compensation towards any overtime that might actually be earned in the same week.
5. If an employee works 40 hours in a week and then takes a paid holiday, do we owe the employee overtime?
No. As discussed in # 4, above, nonexempt employees must be paid overtime only for all hours actually worked over 40 in a single workweek. Thus, in calculating actual working hours for a nonexempt employee, you do not have to count any paid time off in the overtime calculation if the employee did not perform any work during the time off.
So, even if a nonexempt employee works a full 40-hour workweek and also takes a day of paid holiday and is paid for 48 hours that week, the employee is not entitled to overtime pay since he did not actually work more than 40 hours in the workweek.
6. What if an employee is on FMLA leave when a holiday occurs? Should they receive holiday pay?
The answer depends on your policy. You generally do not have to pay an employee for holidays that occur while the employee is out on unpaid FMLA leave if it is not the employer’s policy to provide this benefit during other types of unpaid leave. Similarly, if an employee’s work schedule is reduced for intermittent FMLA leave, you may reduce proportionately the employee’s benefits, such as holiday pay, if the employer’s normal practice is to base this benefit on the number of hours an employee works. However, you may not eliminate the full-time employee’s benefits because the employee is working a part-time schedule if part-time employees normally are not eligible for these benefits.
7. How do we pay nonexempt employees who work a compressed workweek, working four days a week, ten hours a day? Should these employees receive holiday pay if the holiday falls on a day that they are not scheduled to work?
Whether the nonexempt employees working compressed workweeks qualify for holiday pay depends on the terms of your holiday policy and how it has been implemented. Employers using compressed schedules (such as employees working four days/ten hours a day) generally take three basic approaches to eligibility for holiday pay.
(Download free Holidays model policy including best HR practices and legal background. Will require that you create a free account.)
Some employers pay only for holidays occurring on the employee’s regularly scheduled work day. Another more common approach is to allow compressed workweek employees to take off a day on which they would otherwise be scheduled to work. For example, if the employees normally work four days, they work only three days during weeks with holidays. Still other employers prefer to have compressed workweek employees on the job at least four days a week and pay for the holiday even if the employee is not scheduled otherwise to work that day, giving the employees an extra day of pay. This last practice, however, may lower the morale of employees who work a regular schedule and thus receive less pay for the holiday week.
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We hope you’ve found these answers to 7 holiday pay questions to be helpful; if so please take a moment to leave a comment or share this with others on your favorite social networking sites.
Many business owners feel that they can pay their employes “whenever” they want and that is true to a point. Business owners can pay their employees whenever they want as long as the “whenever” meets the laws of the state their business resides in.
As a business owner you probably feel “in control” when it comes to setting a payroll schedule for the people you hire. Certainly you have options, you can issue payroll on a:
- weekly
- bi-weekly {every other week}
- semi-monthly {twice a month, perhaps on the 1st and the 15th}
- or a monthly basis
While there is no federal laws that require how often you pay your employees, the payroll schedule you choose MUST conform to the requirements of the state that your business is located in.
Most states require that every employer has to pay all of the wages due to an employee on a regular payroll schedule, which is determined by you the business owner – BUT you must notify the employees of how frequently you intend to pay them. A “regular schedule” means that you must consistently pay your employees using whatever frequency you choose, in other words you can’t just randomly issue a payroll check.
Many states also tell a business owner how much of a “holdback” they can take. Meaning that if you decide your workweek starts on a Sunday and ends on a Saturday and that you will pay your employees on the Friday AFTER the end of the work week; you are holding back a week’s worth of pay.
A word of caution – a business can get into trouble if it doesn’t pay it’s employees as often as the law requires – and I’m sure you don’t want or need that additional headache! Believe it or not, but each state has their own set of rules and regulations {imagine that!}, in some states the rules are different depending upon the employees occupation. In other words, setting a payroll schedule that is realistic for your company AND that conforms to state requirements can be a mess!
The U.S. Department of Labor provides a fairly detailed overview of employee payroll schedules by state, you can find State Payday Requirements here, the information provided is ONLY an overview of general information – you should most definitely contact your state department of labor for all of the details!
We hope you’ve found this article to be helpful, if so please take a moment to leave a comment or share it with others on your favorite social network.
The benefits of paying the Prevailing Wage Fringe Benefit portion to bona-fide plan is often misunderstood by employers and employees alike.
Prevailing wage jobs, those jobs that are subject to the Davis-Bacon Act and/or State Prevailing Wage Laws, require that all laborers and mechanics {including tradesmen such as carpenters, equipment operators, painters, pipefitters, plumbers, etc.) who perform work on the jobsite are to be paid a set base rate of pay PLUS an hourly fringe benefit rate.
Union contractors automatically pay the total hourly fringe benefit rate to the union hall on behalf of the employee, usually splitting the full hourly rate into specific “funds” – Health & Welfare, Pension, Vacation, etc. When this happens the Union contractor doesn’t pay payroll taxes, worker’s compensation, or general liability insurance on this amount.
Non-Union contractors, on the other hand, can pay the fringe benefit rate to the employee in addition to the stated base rate of pay OR they can pay it into a bona-fide plan on behalf of the employee.
We’ll look at the differences and discuss the benefits to both employees and employers.
In the following examples we’ll be working with a base rate of $41.51, fringe rate of $18.72, a Worker’s Comp experience rate of $10.70 per hundred dollars in wages, and a General Liability Insurance Experience rate of $0.636 per hundred dollars in wages and a standard 40 hour work week.
When the fringes are paid in cash – included in the employees base rate of pay
As an employee you are paid $60.23 per hour ($41.51 + 18.72) x 40 hours = $2,409.20 gross with a net of $1,512.38. As an employee you are paying $896.82 in taxes – see sample paycheck below:
Right click on the image to enlarge it.
As an employer you pay $560.99 in payroll taxes, worker’s comp and general liability insurance in addition to the $2,409.20 gross wages for a total of $2,970.19 to have the employee on the jobsite for 40 hours.
When the fringes are paid to a bona-fide plan on behalf of the employee
As an employee you are paid $41.51 per hour x 40 hours = $1,660.40 gross with a net of $1,101.47 PLUS $748.80 is contributed to the bona-fide plan on your behalf for a total of $1,850.27. As an employee you are paying $558.93 in taxes {in reality that is a savings of $337.89 in taxes) – see sample paycheck below:
Right click on the image to enlarge it
As an employer you pay $1,135.96 in bona-fide plan contributions, payroll taxes, worker’s comp and general liability insurance in addition to the $1660.40 in gross wages for a total of $2,795.86 to have the employee on the jobsite for 40 hours – that’s a savings of $174.33.
Many employers and employees are rightfully cautious about the cost of setting up a bona-fide plan. Many times setting up a traditional 401(k) or 403(b) plan is costly (one customer recently told me that it would cost them $5,000.00 to initially set up the plan) and then the employees must wait until legal retirement age before being able to start withdrawing the money.
The Supplemental Unemployment Benefit Plan (SUB Plan) offered by Prevailing Wage Contractors Association (PWCA) has a start up cost to the employer of $200.00; and provides employees access to the money when they need it most – when they are not working or have missed some time. The SUB Plan can be used to pay an employee when he has a short work period; which is defined as working less than 40 hour in a week or less than 173 hours in a month. Short work periods can be caused by layoffs, bad weather, illness, lack of work, equipment down time or any number of reasons.
For additional information about the SUB Plan offered by PWCA, visit their website – or contact Nancy Smyth.
