The amount of annual leave you can carry over from one leave year to the next depends on your employment category. Image: photosync/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffRegardless of the retirement system you are in, the basic rules on leave accrual are the same for all full-time employees. The amount you can earn depends on your years of federal service. With fewer than 3 years, you earn 4 hours per biweekly pay period (13 days a year). If you have more than three years of service but fewer than 15, you earn 6 hours per pay period (20 days per year). With 15 or more years of service, you earn 8 hours per pay period (26 days a year).
If you are a Senior Executive Service member or other senior level scientific and technical employee, you earn 8 hours of annual leave per pay period (26 days a year) without regard to your years of service.
If you are a part-time GS, Wage or Postal Service employee, the amount of annual leave you’ll earn is prorated according to the time you are in pay status.
The amount of annual leave you can carry over from one leave year to the next depends on your employment category. GS and Wage Grade employees can carry over a maximum of 240 hours (30 days). An overseas employee can carry over 560 hours (45 days). A Postal Service bargaining unit employee can carry over 440 hours (55 days). A Postal Service Executive and Administrative Schedule employee can carry over 560 hours (70 days). If you are in the Senior Executive Service, you have a 720 hour limit (90 days).
With rare exception, if you don’t use any hours above that level by the end of the leave year (which varies annually; typically it’s a week or so into the new calendar year), you’ll lose it.
When you retire or otherwise separate from the government, you’ll receive a lump-sum payment for that leave equal to the amount of pay you would have received in you had stayed on the job until all that leave ran out. (Note: If you are a Postal Service bargaining unit employees, you’ll be paid for any leave you carried over from the previous year and any additional leave you earned during the year you retire, as long as it doesn’t exceed the carryover limit for your bargaining unit.)
To arrive at that figure, your agency will multiply your hours on unused annual leave by your hourly rate of pay.
Here’s what they’ll include when determining the value of your leave:
• Your rate of basic pay
• Locality pay or other similar geographic adjustment
• Within-grade increase, but only if the waiting period was met on the day you separate
• Across-the-board annual adjustments
• Administratively uncontrollable overtime (AUO) pay, availability pay, and standby duty pay
• Night differentials for FWS employees only (including that portion of the lump-sum periods that would have occurred when you were scheduled to work night shifts
• Regularly scheduled overtime pay under the Fair Labor Standards Act, if you were on an uncommon tour of duty
• Supervisory differentials
• Nonforeign area cost of living allowances and post differentials
• Foreign area post allowances
What’s not included in your Basic pay are such things as bonuses, allowances, as-needed overtime, holiday pay and certain differentials.
To determine if a particular kind of pay is part of your Basic pay, compare what you are receiving in your paycheck with the amount that is being deducted from it for retirement contributions. If retirement contributions are being deducted, then it’s included in your Basic pay. If they aren’t, it isn’t included.
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