New Brunswick Public Holiday Pay Calculator

A regular day, with an averaging fallback

Section 18(2) is the general rule: the employer gives the day off and pays the employee their regular wages. Section 19(1.1) defines those as the wages you would have received had you not worked on the public holiday.

Section 21(1) handles variable pay. Where wages vary from day to day, holiday pay is at least your average daily earnings, exclusive of overtime, for the days on which you worked during the 30 calendar days before the holiday.

Excluded from the base: public holiday pay, pay in lieu of public holidays, vacation pay, pay in lieu of vacation, gratuities and honoraria — all by the s. 1 definition of wages. Commissions are included.

New Brunswick is consistent, which is unusual

The same s. 1 definition of wages drives both the vacation pay base and the holiday pay base. So public holiday pay is excluded from both calculations, and there is no asymmetry to trip over.

British Columbia and Saskatchewan are the opposite: both count overtime toward vacation pay while excluding it from holiday pay, inside the same Act. Nova Scotia runs its own version, including holiday pay in the vacation base.

Ninety days, and missing either shift costs you

Section 18(1) lists who the entitlement does not apply to. The two that matter most:

• Anyone employed by their present employer for fewer than 90 days during the previous 12 calendar months.
• Anyone who, without reasonable cause, fails to work their scheduled regular day of work preceding or following the holiday.

Note the polarity. In New Brunswick missing either surrounding day forfeits the holiday. In Prince Edward Island you lose it only by missing both. Two neighbouring provinces, opposite outcomes for someone who missed one shift.

There is no minimum-days-worked test in New Brunswick. The 30-day period in s. 21 is only the averaging window — it is not a qualifying threshold, and the two are easy to confuse.

Eight holidays, with Remembrance Day inside the Act

New Year’s Day, Family Day, Good Friday, Canada Day, New Brunswick Day, Labour Day, Remembrance Day and Christmas Day.

Remembrance Day is a paid public holiday under the Employment Standards Act itself in New Brunswick — unlike Nova Scotia and Manitoba, which push it into separate statutes with quite different rules.

Not paid: the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, Victoria Day, Thanksgiving, Boxing Day and Easter Monday. Thanksgiving and Victoria Day being absent surprises people moving from Ontario.

Working the holiday pays 1.5× for the time worked plus your regular wages, under s. 19(1). Section 19(2) adds that those hours do not count toward overtime that week.

Who is left out

General Regulation 85-179 s. 3(1) exempts a long professional list from ss. 18–22: architecture, dentistry, law, medicine, chiropody, optometry, pharmacy, professional engineering, public and chartered accounting, psychology, surveying and veterinary science, plus real estate, automobile and mobile home salespeople, off-premises commission salespeople and athletes.

Section 23 removes the entitlement where a collective agreement effective after 16 July 1976 provides at least eight paid holidays including New Brunswick Day. Section 22 treats a payment of 4% of wages as equivalent to the public holiday benefits.

A complaint must be made within 12 months, and recovery is confined to the 12 months before it.