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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 general holiday pay — for irregular or less-than-standard hours, ten per cent of the wages from the two weeks before the holiday's week. Work out your own figure — the calculator below runs the province's formula on your wages.
Yukon has eleven general holidays, and for irregular or part-time hours the pay for one of them is a tenth of two weeks' wages: everything earned for hours worked in the two weeks before the week the holiday falls in, divided by ten. An employee on standard hours is paid a normal day instead, and a weekly or monthly salary is simply not reduced. The Employment Standards Act calls them general holidays; the Yukon government's own guidance notes they are commonly referred to as statutory holidays.
Last reviewed · maintained by Ihor Bezrukavnyk · how we calculate
These are the conditions Yukon 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 apply to the Government of Yukon or its employees, and the general exemption regulation takes a sitter out of the Act entirely. The more familiar exemptions do not reach this Part: managerial and supervisory staff, farm workers and domestics are exempt from the hours-of-work rules, not from general holidays, so they do get these days. Work in a federally regulated sector — banks, airlines, interprovincial trucking, post offices, broadcasters — falls under the Canada Labour Code instead.
Yukon's ten per cent rule covers irregular hours and hours below the standard 40, which is where most hourly work sits. One figure runs it: the wages from the two payroll weeks before the week of the holiday.
Everything earned for hours worked in those two weeks, overtime pay included. Leave vacation pay out.
This is the day itself, and it is the figure for irregular or less-than-standard hours. On standard hours the day pays your normal hours at your regular rate instead. If you also worked the holiday, what you are owed for those hours comes on top.
The formula
10% of the wages, excluding vacation pay, earned for the hours worked in the 2 weeks immediately preceding the week the general holiday falls in
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
The $126.00 of overtime in week one is inside that total, not outside it. Subsection 30(2) removes vacation pay and nothing else.
Overtime is not in the wage base
Vacation pay is the only thing subsection 30(2) takes out of the two-week total. Overtime stays in, which is the opposite of the rule in Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta: the Yukon Employment Standards guidance says in terms that the ten per cent base includes any overtime earned in that period. The phrase “exclusive of overtime or bonus” is used in s. 30(1)(c), for employees paid on a commission or other basis, and is not used in s. 30(2). Separately, the Act's definition of wages leaves out gratuities and discretionary payments unrelated to hours of work, production or efficiency.
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 |
| Victoria Day | 18 May 2026 | Monday |
| National Indigenous Peoples Day | 21 June 2026 | Sunday |
| Canada Day | 1 July 2026 | Wednesday |
| Discovery Day | 17 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 |
One date falls on a weekend in 2026: National Indigenous Peoples Day, Sunday 21 June 2026. If a general holiday falls on a day that is not a working day for you, s. 29(2) moves it: you are entitled to the holiday with pay on the working day immediately following. In 2026 that matters most for National Indigenous Peoples Day, which falls on Sunday 21 June.
Section 31 gives what follows in addition to the regular payment made under s. 30. Working the holiday adds to the holiday pay rather than replacing it.
For the hours worked on the holiday the Act sets out two alternatives: not less than the applicable overtime rate — 1.5× regular wages — for all of them, or your regular rate for those hours plus a day off, which may be added to your annual vacation or taken at a time convenient to you and the employer. On the example above the first alternative is $151.20 plus $252.00 for an eight-hour shift: $403.20.
A week containing a general holiday has its overtime threshold cut by 8 hours, from 40 to 32, and the hours worked on the holiday itself are not counted when the week's overtime hours are worked out. And an employee who was not required to work the holiday cannot be required to work on another day that would otherwise be a non-working day in that week unless those hours are paid at least at the overtime rate.
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 Yukon rather than assuming it either way.
For an employee who works irregular hours or less than standard hours, the day pays 10 per cent of the wages, excluding vacation pay, earned for the hours worked in the two weeks immediately before the week the holiday falls in. Two weeks of $1,512.00 give $151.20 for the day. An employee on standard hours paid hourly or daily is instead paid the wages they would have earned at their regular rate for their normal hours of work, a weekly or monthly salary is simply not reduced, and someone paid on another basis gets the average of their daily wages, exclusive of overtime or bonus, for the week the holiday occurs.
For the 10 per cent calculation, yes — and this is where Yukon parts company with the provinces that strip overtime out of the base. Subsection 30(2) takes 10 per cent of the employee's wages, excluding vacation pay, for the hours worked in the two-week window, and vacation pay is the only thing it removes; the Yukon Employment Standards guidance says the base includes any overtime earned in that period. The words “exclusive of overtime or bonus” do appear one paragraph away, in s. 30(1)(c), but that paragraph covers employees paid on a commission or other basis, so overtime is out of their average and inside everyone else's 10 per cent.
The Act does not settle it, so treat both figures as live. Section 30(1) is expressly subject to s. 30(2), and s. 30(2) applies to an employee who works less than the standard hours of work or who works irregular hours. Standard hours are eight in a day and 40 in a week, so read literally a steady 30-hour week is caught by the 10 per cent rule rather than by the normal-day rule in s. 30(1)(b). Nothing in the text says whether that literal reading is intended, and the two results differ materially for such a worker. Work out both before accepting the lower one.
Section 29(1) states the entitlement positively: every employer shall give each employee a holiday with pay for every general holiday falling within their employment. There is no length-of-service test beyond the exceptions in s. 34, which apply only to a general holiday the employee did not work, and which remove the pay in four cases — the holiday occurs in your first 30 calendar days with the employer; you were called in to work that day and did not report; the holiday fell on a day when you had already been absent 14 consecutive days on unpaid leave you requested; or you did not report for your last scheduled working day before the holiday or your first one after it without your employer's consent. That last case is defeated by the employer's consent or by any absence the Act itself permits.
Both amounts, not one instead of the other. Section 31 pays you, in addition to the regular payment under s. 30, either not less than the applicable overtime rate — 1.5× your regular wages — for all hours worked that day, or your regular rate for those hours plus a day off added to your annual vacation or taken at a time convenient to both of you. On the example above, the holiday's own $151.20 plus $252.00 for an eight-hour shift comes to $403.20. The s. 34 exceptions do not reach a holiday you worked, and the Employment Standards Branch confirms that you get both the holiday pay and the applicable overtime even with less than 30 days of service.
No. Yukon's list runs to eleven days, and Boxing Day is not on it, nor is Heritage Day or Easter Monday. Discovery Day is on it and is Yukon's own — 17 August in 2026. An employer can close for a day that is not a general holiday, and when it does the terms come from the policy or the contract rather than from the Act.
A holiday sits inside a week that has its own rules — Yukon 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.