Federal Leave Accrual
Project your annual and sick leave to the last day of the leave year, pay period by pay period. Shows which accrual tier you are in, how many hours are use-or-lose, the OPM deadline to schedule them, and the exact date you cross into the next tier.
Reviewed by Jonathan D., 20-year federal employee · Formulas verified against OPM.gov ·
| Modeled | Not modeled |
|---|---|
| The three statutory tiers in 5 U.S.C. 6303(a), including the 10-hour final pay period for the 3-to-15-year tier. | The 90-day waiting rule for temporary appointments shorter than 90 days under 5 U.S.C. 6303(b). |
| Part-time accrual by the 5 CFR 630.303 divisors of 20, 13 and 10 hours in a pay status. | Uncommon tours of duty over 80 hours a pay period, such as firefighter schedules, which prorate under 5 CFR 630.210. |
| OPM published leave year start and end dates and the published use-or-lose scheduling deadline. | Agency payroll systems that run a different pay period schedule. OPM notes some do. |
| The 240, 360 and 720 hour ceilings, including every service 5 U.S.C. 6304(f) lists for 720, with the OPM rule that SES-equivalent pay systems do not get 720 by equivalence alone. | Whether you actually fall into one of the three overseas classes in 6304(b). The tool takes your word for it. |
| The 5 U.S.C. 6303(c) rule that a new accrual rate starts the pay period after the one in which you complete the service, counting the service anniversary as the completion day. When the anniversary is the first day of a pay period, the result flags that a payroll office reading the day before as the completion day would start the new rate one pay period earlier. | Which completion day your payroll office uses when the anniversary is the first day of a pay period; no statute, regulation or OPM fact sheet names it. Mid-year moves into or out of a senior position, where 5 CFR 630.301(f) splits the leave between two ceilings. |
| A projection that assumes you stay in a pay status for every remaining pay period. | Nonpay status. Under 5 CFR 630.208(a) accrual is reduced once nonpay hours reach 80 in a leave year, and again at each further 80. |
| Sick leave at 4 hours a pay period full-time, prorated part-time, with no ceiling. | Advanced annual or sick leave, donated leave, restored leave accounts, and the 104 and 480 hour family-care usage caps. |
The accrual table, with the detail most tables drop
Almost every published version of this table shows 4, 6 and 8 hours and stops. Two things get left out. The 6-hour tier earns 10 hours in the last full pay period of the year, which is why its annual total is 160 and not 156. And part-time employees are not on the per-pay-period schedule at all. They earn by the hour, on a divisor.
| Service | Full-time | Part-time | Per leave year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Less than 3 years | 4 hours a pay period | 1 hour per 20 hours in a pay status | 104 hours |
| 3 but less than 15 years | 6 hours a pay period, 10 in the last full period of the year | 1 hour per 13 hours in a pay status | 160 hours |
| 15 or more years | 8 hours a pay period | 1 hour per 10 hours in a pay status | 208 hours |
| SES, Senior Level, Scientific and Professional | 8 hours a pay period, any length of service | Pro rata of the 8-hour rate | 208 hours |
Two traps worth knowing
The first is the senior-pay-system trap. A position in an OPM-determined SES-equivalent pay system earns 8 hours a pay period from day one, under 5 U.S.C. 6303(f)(2). It does not get the 90-day carryover ceiling. OPM says so directly: employees in equivalent systems do not receive a 90-day annual leave ceiling by virtue of being deemed equivalent. You accrue like an executive and carry over like everyone else, which is exactly the combination that produces a surprise forfeiture. The exception is a service that 5 U.S.C. 6304(f) names directly, such as the Senior Foreign Service, the Defense Intelligence SES or the FBI and DEA SES. Those carry 720 hours by statute.
The second is the overseas ceiling. The 45-day limit is not a benefit of working abroad. 5 U.S.C. 6304(b) lists three specific classes, built around how you were recruited and whether return transportation is part of your conditions of employment. Locally hired staff who do not meet one of those tests stay at 240 hours. OPM prints the same caution on its own fact sheet.
Schedule it, do not just plan it
Forfeited annual leave can be restored under 5 U.S.C. 6304(d) when an agency exigency, an administrative error, or your own illness kills leave you had already scheduled. The general gate is in 5 CFR 630.308(a): before forfeited leave “may be considered for restoration”, its use “must have been scheduled in writing before the start of the third biweekly pay period prior to the end of the leave year.” For leave year 2026 that is November 28, 2026. You still have until the last day of the leave year, January 9, 2027, to use the leave. So in the ordinary case, leave you never put on paper is not restorable.
That gate is not absolute, and three carve-outs matter. 5 CFR 630.308(b) switches the advance-scheduling requirement off entirely for employees covered by 5 U.S.C. 6304(d)(3), the provision that deems certain Department of Defense base closures and realignments to be an exigency. 5 U.S.C. 6304(d)(4) restores a DoD emergency essential employee’s leave lost by reason of service in a combat zone “regardless of whether such leave was scheduled.” And 5 CFR 630.310 lets the Director of OPM deem a declared national emergency an exigency and exempt employees whose work is essential to the response. If one of those fits you, ask your servicing HR office rather than writing the leave off.
On the other side, the 6304(d)(1)(A) administrative-error ground is written without any scheduling condition in the statute itself, even though 630.308(a) gates restoration generally. If your leave vanished because payroll got your SCD or your ceiling wrong, that is worth raising as its own claim.
If you are heading for separation or retirement instead, the balance converts to cash. Our Annual Leave Payout Calculator prices it, and the Federal Leave Optimizer finds the holiday-adjacent days that stretch the hours furthest.