New Brunswick statutory holiday pay calculator (2026)
If you qualify and do not work it, the day pays your regular wages — or, where your wages vary from day to day, your average daily earnings over the 30 calendar days before it. Work out your own figure — the calculator below runs the province's formula on your wages.
New Brunswick has eight public holidays, and the default pay for one of them is the plainest rule in the country: your regular wages for the day, with no averaging formula stated. Averaging enters only where your wages vary from day to day — then the Act takes your daily earnings from the 30 calendar days before the holiday, overtime excluded, and divides by the days you actually worked in them. The Employment Standards Act calls them public holidays, jours fériés in the French text.
Work out your public holiday pay
This runs the section 21(1) route, the one for wages that vary from day to day: earnings over the 30 calendar days before the holiday, divided by the days you worked in them. If your wages do not vary, section 18(2) simply pays your regular wages for the day and there is nothing to average.
What you earned on the days you worked inside that window, with overtime pay left out.
The days you actually worked in the window — not 30, and not the days you were scheduled.
This is the day itself. Working the holiday adds 1.5× your regular rate for every hour worked — the section below sets out how the two stack.
Who qualifies
These are the conditions New Brunswick puts on the day. They sit on the shifts around the holiday and on your time with the employer — not on how many hours you worked in the week itself.
- Ninety days with the employer in the last twelve monthsSection 18(1)(a) disqualifies an employee who has been employed by the present employer fewer than 90 days during the 12 calendar months immediately before the holiday. These are calendar days of employment, not days worked, and there is no separate first-30-days rule.
- Work your scheduled day before and your scheduled day afterSection 18(1)(c) takes the pay away from an employee who, without reasonable cause, fails to work the scheduled regular day of work preceding or following the holiday. Both sides count. GNB guidance confirms these need not be the immediately adjacent calendar days, and illness is generally accepted as reasonable cause.
- If you agreed to work the holiday, report and work itSection 18(1)(d) removes the pay from an employee who agreed to work the public holiday and then, without reasonable cause, failed to report and perform the work.
- Elect-to-work arrangements are outside the entitlementSection 18(1)(e) excludes an employee employed under an arrangement whereby the employee elects to work when requested — the on-call or elect-to-work shape of the job, not the number of hours in it.
Whole occupations sit outside sections 18 to 22 by regulation. NB Reg 85-179, s. 3(1) exempts architecture, dentistry, law, medicine, chiropody, optometry, pharmacy, professional engineering, public or chartered accounting, psychology, surveying and veterinary science, along with real estate salesmen, automobile and mobile home salesmen, commission salesmen other than route salesmen who sell away from the employer's establishment, and athletes participating in activities related to their sport. Section 23 of the Act exempts employers and employees covered by a collective agreement effective after 16 July 1976 that provides a minimum of eight paid holidays including New Brunswick Day.
The New Brunswick formula: a regular day, averaged only if your wages vary
The formula
regular wages for the day (s. 18(2)) — or, where wages vary from day to day: daily earnings excluding overtime in the 30 calendar days immediately before the holiday ÷ the days you actually worked in those 30 days (s. 21(1))
- Section 21(1) fixes no divisor. It is average daily earnings for the days on which you worked during the 30 calendar days immediately preceding the holiday, so the window is 30 calendar days and the divisor is however many days you actually worked inside it — not 20, not 30, and not a percentage.
- The averaging route is conditioned on wages that vary from day to day. For an employee on fixed wages the Act says only “their regular wages” and supplies no computation of its own. What a regular day amounts to for someone with a constant hourly rate but irregular scheduling is not resolved on the face of the text: section 19(1.1) defines regular wages as the wages you would have received had you not worked the holiday, but that definition is expressly scoped to section 19(1) and does not formally govern section 18(2).
- Route salespeople have an extra cap. Section 21(2) limits the holiday pay so it does not raise their earnings for the holiday week above their average weekly wages for the preceding four weeks — a four-week test that applies to that class alone.
Check what the base leaves out. Where a jurisdiction averages your wages, what it strips out of that average decides the day’s pay — and the answer is not the same across the country. The line below is this jurisdiction’s own.
Worked example
- Days worked in the 30 calendar days before the holiday
- 19
- Daily earnings in that window, overtime excluded
- $2,840.00
- Divide by days worked
- 19
- Average daily earnings
- $149.47
7 overtime hours in the same window stay outside the $2,840.00, because s. 21(1) averages earnings exclusive of overtime. This is the variable-wage route; on steady daily wages the day is paid at your regular wages instead.
Overtime is not in the wage base
Overtime is expressly out, in the words of the averaging rule itself: section 21(1) reads “average daily earnings exclusive of overtime”. Those words are attached to section 21(1) only — section 18(2) has no comparable phrase — but since it pays a single ordinary day's wages rather than an average of what came before, overtime never reaches that base either. The section 1 definition of wages also leaves out public holiday pay, pay in lieu of public holidays, vacation pay, pay in lieu of vacation, gratuities and honoraria.
It is the line worth checking first: if a public holiday pay figure looks high after a heavy week, check what went into the base it came from — and check it against this jurisdiction, not the one next door.
New Brunswick public holiday dates in 2026 & 2027
| Holiday | 2026 | 2027 |
|---|---|---|
| New Year's Day | 1 January 2026Thursday | 1 January 2027Friday |
| Family Day | 16 February 2026Monday | 15 February 2027Monday |
| Good Friday | 3 April 2026Friday | 26 March 2027Friday |
| Canada Day | 1 July 2026Wednesday | 1 July 2027Thursday |
| New Brunswick Day | 3 August 2026Monday | 2 August 2027Monday |
| Labour Day | 7 September 2026Monday | 6 September 2027Monday |
| Remembrance Day | 11 November 2026Wednesdaynext | 11 November 2027Thursday |
| Christmas Day | 25 December 2026Friday | 25 December 2027Saturday |
Not a public holiday in New Brunswick: Thanksgiving Day; Boxing Day
One date falls on a weekend in 2026 and 2027: Christmas Day, Saturday 25 December 2027. Section 18(4) covers a public holiday that falls on a day that is not a working day for you, or that falls during your vacation. The employer can agree with you to pay your regular wages for the holiday, or designate another working day as a substitute holiday. Section 18(5) sets out a separate arrangement for hotels, motels, tourist resorts, restaurants, taverns and continuous operations.
- Those eight are the whole list, and none of them is optional or left to the employer to observe. Victoria Day, the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation on 30 September, Thanksgiving and Boxing Day are not public holidays in New Brunswick, though they are elsewhere in Canada.
- A substitute day can move a holiday but not remove it. Section 18(3) lets an employer and an employee agree to substitute another working day, no later than the employee's next vacation, and section 20 requires the regular wages for a substituted day to be paid out if the employment ends before the day is taken.
- This is the provincial law. A federally regulated workplace in New Brunswick — a bank, an airline, an interprovincial carrier — follows the Canada Labour Code instead, which has a different list of days and a different formula.
If you work the holiday
One and a half times for every hour worked
Section 19(1) requires the employer to pay, for time worked on a public holiday, not less than one and one-half times your regular rate of wages. Eight hours at $20.00 come to $240.00 at $30.00 an hour.
Plus the day's own pay, if you qualify
The same section adds your regular wages on top where you are entitled to the holiday with pay — section 19(1.1) reads that as the wages you would have received had you not worked the public holiday. On the example figures, a day worth $149.47 plus $240.00 of premium pay lands at $389.47. An employee who does not qualify under section 18(1) receives the premium alone.
Hospitality and continuous operations run their own version
Section 18(5) covers an employee working in a hotel, motel, tourist resort, restaurant, tavern or any continuous operation who is required by the nature of the operation to work the holiday. The employer may instead pay not less than regular wages for each hour worked and give a substitute holiday — the first working day after the employee's next vacation, or another agreed working day — paid at regular wages.
Whether hours worked on a holiday also count toward the week’s overtime threshold is a separate question with a separate answer in each province. Check it against the overtime rules for New Brunswick rather than assuming it either way.
Public holiday pay in New Brunswick
How much public holiday pay does New Brunswick owe for one holiday?
It depends on whether your wages vary from day to day. Section 18(2) is the default and says only that a qualifying employee gets their regular wages for the day. Section 21(1) applies where wages vary day to day: average daily earnings, exclusive of overtime, for the days you worked in the 30 calendar days immediately before the holiday. Nineteen days worked and $2,840.00 of earnings in that window come to $149.47 for the day.
Do I qualify for public holiday pay in New Brunswick?
Section 18(1) sets it out as a list of disqualifications. You are out if you have been with the present employer fewer than 90 days in the 12 calendar months before the holiday — those are calendar days of employment, not days worked. You are also out if, without reasonable cause, you fail to work your scheduled regular day of work before or after the holiday, if you agreed to work the holiday and then did not report, or if you work under an arrangement where you elect to work when requested.
Does overtime count toward public holiday pay in New Brunswick?
No. Section 21(1) averages daily earnings “exclusive of overtime”, so overtime pay never enters the 30-day base, and the section 1 definition of wages already leaves out public holiday pay, pay in lieu of public holidays, vacation pay, pay in lieu of vacation, gratuities and honoraria. Separately, section 19(2) says hours worked on a public holiday are not taken into consideration in calculating overtime pay for the work week the holiday falls in.
What am I paid for working a public holiday in New Brunswick?
Section 19(1) pays not less than 1.5× your regular rate for the time worked, and, if you are entitled to the holiday with pay, your regular wages on top of that. An eight-hour shift at $20.00 is $240.00 of premium pay, and a qualifying employee whose day is worth $149.47 lands at $389.47. An employee who does not qualify receives the 1.5× premium only. Hotels, motels, tourist resorts, restaurants, taverns and continuous operations have their own arrangement under section 18(5).
Is Thanksgiving or Boxing Day a public holiday in New Brunswick?
No. New Brunswick's list runs to eight days. Victoria Day, the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation on 30 September, Thanksgiving and Boxing Day are not public holidays under the Employment Standards Act, even though they are elsewhere in the country. An employer can still close on them, and the terms then come from the policy or the contract. A federally regulated workplace in New Brunswick follows the Canada Labour Code instead, which has both a different list and a different formula.
Can my employer pay 4% of my wages instead of the public holidays?
This one is not settled by the text. Section 22(2) says a payment of 4% of wages is equivalent to the public holiday benefits prescribed by the Act, but section 22(1) frames that as a comparison against benefits an employee receives under a collective agreement or a contract of employment. GNB's guidance page presents 4% of gross wages as a free-standing employer option available from the first day of employment, which is wider than the wording of the section. Whether a bare employer election, with no contractual term behind it, satisfies section 22(1) is not resolved on the face of the Act. Section 22(3) does keep the 1.5× premium for hours worked on the holiday in either case.
Check the rest of the pay period
A holiday sits inside a week that has its own rules — New Brunswick pays overtime after 44h in a week with no daily threshold. Overtally runs that side of the arithmetic, hour by hour, and shows every line behind the total.
Overtally for iPhone — coming soonHoliday pay in other provinces and territories
sources
- Employment Standards Act, SNB 1982, c E-7.2 — ss. 18–23, public holidays (consolidated to 12 June 2026)
- Employment Standards Act, s. 16
Every figure on this page traces to the statute or agency page above. If one is out of date, tell us — corrections ship the same week.
Overtally computes what you should be paid before taxes. It does not calculate take-home pay, withholding or deductions, and it is not legal advice — it is your own record and your own estimate.