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Labour Day
Monday 7 September 2026
19 days
after the last review of this page
If you qualify and do not work it, the day pays a normal day at your regular rate — no four-week window behind it. Work out your own figure — the calculator below runs the province's formula on your wages.
Nunavut has eleven general holidays, and for an hourly employee the pay for one of them is not an average of anything: it is your regular rate of wages for the normal hours of work of that day. The Labour Standards Act keeps averaging for employees paid on some basis other than time, and even there it never states a divisor. Nunavut says general holiday where other places say statutory holiday; the days are the same idea.
Last reviewed · maintained by Ihor Bezrukavnyk · how we calculate
These are the conditions Nunavut 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.
The Act does not reach employment in the public service, trappers, people engaged in commercial fisheries, or members and students of professions designated by regulation. One exclusion is narrower than it looks: employees employed primarily in a managerial capacity are outside Part I, which is hours of work and overtime, not Part IV — managers keep their general holidays and their holiday pay. Federally regulated work, such as banking, telecom and air or rail transport, runs on the Canada Labour Code instead.
Nothing is averaged here, so the calculator needs one figure: what a normal day of work pays you at your regular rate.
Your regular hourly rate times the hours you would normally work that day — 8 hours at $23.00 is $184.00. Leave overtime hours and the premium on them out; s. 24(1) is built on normal hours.
This is the day itself. Working the general holiday adds at least 1.5× for the hours you work on top of this figure, unless the employer gives a substituted paid holiday instead — the section below sets out both.
The formula
regular rate of wages × the normal hours of work of the employee for that day
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
Six overtime hours in the same week change nothing above. The figure is built from your regular rate and your normal hours, and standard hours in Nunavut are eight in a day and 40 in a week, so overtime hours fall outside them.
Overtime is not in the wage base
Nunavut has no clause that names overtime and takes it out of a wage base, because for an hourly employee there is no wage base to take it out of. Section 24(1) multiplies a rate by normal hours rather than averaging what you were paid, so neither the overtime hours nor the premium on them can enter it: s. 1 defines overtime as hours in excess of standard hours of work, and s. 4 puts standard hours at eight in a day and 40 in a week. Section 11(3)(b) draws the same line from the other side, keeping hours worked on a general holiday out of the overtime calculation. For the s. 24(2) averaging route the Act is silent — it averages daily wages, and wages is defined broadly enough to exclude only tips and gratuities, so on its face overtime remuneration would sit inside that base. Do not import another province's exclusion into it.
It is the line worth checking first: if a general 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.
| Holiday | Date | Day |
|---|---|---|
| New Year's Day | 1 January 2026 | Thursday |
| Good Friday | 3 April 2026 | Friday |
| Birthday of the reigning sovereign (Victoria Day) | 18 May 2026 | Monday |
| Canada Day | 1 July 2026 | Wednesday |
| Nunavut Day | 9 July 2026 | Thursday |
| First Monday in August (Civic Holiday) | 3 August 2026 | Monday |
| Labour Daynext | 7 September 2026 | Monday |
| National Day for Truth and Reconciliation | 30 September 2026 | Wednesday |
| Thanksgiving Day | 12 October 2026 | Monday |
| Remembrance Day | 11 November 2026 | Wednesday |
| Christmas Day | 25 December 2026 | Friday |
No 2026 date falls on a Saturday or Sunday. A holiday can still land on a day you personally do not work. Where a general holiday falls on a day that is not a working day for you, s. 25(2) leaves the employer two options: pay the s. 24 holiday pay for it, or give a substituted paid holiday on the same terms. The choice belongs to the employer; either way the day is not simply dropped.
Section 25(1)(a) pays an employee required to work a general holiday, in addition to any payment under s. 24, at a rate at least equal to 1.5× the regular rate of wages for the time worked that day. On the example above that is $184.00 plus $276.00 for an eight-hour shift: $460.00.
Section 25(1)(b) is the alternative the employer may choose: a holiday with s. 24 pay at some other time convenient to the employee and the employer, no later than the employee's next annual vacation or the end of the employment, whichever comes first. The substituted day is then deemed to be the general holiday, and it carries the same pay rules.
Section 25(2) covers the general holiday that falls on your non-working day. The employer either pays the s. 24 holiday pay or gives a substituted paid holiday on the same terms as above.
Section 26 sits beside all of this: an employee who is not required to work on a general holiday cannot be made to work another day in that week that would otherwise not be a working day unless the time worked is paid at a rate at least equal to double the regular rate — $46.00 an hour in the example.
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 Nunavut rather than assuming it either way.
If your wages are calculated on the basis of time — anyone paid by the hour — s. 24(1) pays your regular rate of wages for the normal hours of work for that day. Eight hours at $23.00 is $184.00. There is no four-week window and no divisor in that calculation; averaging appears only in s. 24(2), which covers employees paid on a basis other than time.
Not for an hourly employee. Section 24(1) builds the day from the regular rate and the normal hours of work, so it never touches what you actually earned in overtime, and s. 4 puts standard hours at eight in a day and 40 in a week, which leaves overtime hours outside normal hours. Section 24(2), the averaging route for people paid on another basis, says nothing about overtime — its base is daily wages, and the Act's definition of wages excludes only tips and gratuities. Nunavut has no express clause taking overtime pay out of that base, so the point is open there.
Section 22 gives every employee a paid general holiday falling in their period of employment, and s. 28 takes the pay for an unworked holiday back in four cases: fewer than 30 days worked for that employer in the preceding 12 months; not reporting to work on the holiday after being called in; not reporting, without the employer's consent, on the last regular working day before or the one after; and being on pregnancy or parental leave. The 30 days are days worked, not continuous service.
Section 25(1)(a) pays the s. 24 holiday pay plus at least 1.5× your regular rate for the time you actually worked — $184.00 plus $276.00 for an eight-hour shift at $23.00, or $460.00. Under s. 25(1)(b) the employer may instead give a paid holiday at another time convenient to both of you, no later than your next annual vacation or the end of the job, whichever comes first.
No, and neither is Family Day. Nunavut's list runs to eleven days, and two of them are days most provinces leave off: Nunavut Day on 9 July and the first Monday in August. An employer can close on Boxing Day anyway, but then the terms come from the policy or the contract rather than from the Labour Standards Act.
Section 25(2) gives the employer two ways to settle it: pay the s. 24 holiday pay for the day, or give a substituted paid holiday on the same terms. None of the eleven 2026 dates falls on a Saturday or Sunday, so this is about your own schedule rather than the calendar. Separately, s. 26 says that if you are not required to work the general holiday, you cannot be made to work another otherwise non-working day in that week unless you are paid at least double your regular rate for the time worked.
A holiday sits inside a week that has its own rules — Nunavut pays overtime after 40h in a week and after 8h in a day. Overtally runs that side of the arithmetic, hour by hour, and shows every line behind the total.
iPhone & Android — coming soonEvery 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.