Saskatchewan Public Holiday Pay Calculator

Five per cent, and what gets added back

Section 2-32(1)(a) of The Saskatchewan Employment Act pays 5% of the employee’s wages, not including overtime pay, earned in the four weeks before the public holiday.

Section 2-32(2) then adds two things back into that base, which most calculators miss entirely:

• Vacation pay for vacation you actually took in those four weeks
• Public holiday pay for any other public holiday falling inside the window

The second one compounds during the December period, where Christmas and New Year fall within four weeks of each other.

Overtime counts for vacation pay and not for this

This is why a payroll system cannot share one wage base between the two calculations, and why generic Canadian calculators get Saskatchewan wrong in both directions.

There is no qualifying condition

Every other province gates public holiday pay somehow — a service threshold, a minimum number of days worked, or a rule about the shift before and after. Saskatchewan does none of it.

Section 2-32(1) is unconditional. There is no minimum service period, no attendance test, and no absence-based disqualification anywhere in the Act or the regulations.

Compare British Columbia, which requires 30 days of employment and wages earned on 15 of the last 30 days, or New Brunswick, which wants 90 days in the previous 12 months.

The 2026 regulations added a substitution rule

The Employment Standards Regulations that governed this were repealed on 1 January 2026 and replaced by The Employment Standards Regulations, 2025. Anything citing the old regulation numbers is out of date.

The new s. 5-7 sets out how a day may be substituted for a public holiday: by agreement with the employee or a majority of employees, within four weeks of the holiday, with a copy of the agreement given to the employee and retained for two years. Remembrance Day cannot be substituted.

Section 5-6 carries forward the Sunday rule: where New Year’s Day, Christmas or Remembrance Day falls on a Sunday, the following Monday is observed — unless the business is normally open on Sundays.

Ten holidays, but not Truth and Reconciliation

Section 2-30(2) lists ten: New Year’s Day, Family Day, Good Friday, Victoria Day, Canada Day, Saskatchewan Day, Labour Day, Thanksgiving, Remembrance Day and Christmas Day.

30 September is not a Saskatchewan public holiday. The province states this plainly: it is not a minimum requirement for provincially regulated employers and employees. It remains a paid holiday for federally regulated workers, which is where the confusion comes from.

Working a public holiday pays the 5% amount plus 1.5× your hourly rate for every hour you are required or permitted to work, under s. 2-32(3).

Managers are entitled in Saskatchewan. The managerial exemption in the regulations reaches hours of work and overtime only. Construction workers get 4% in lieu; election officials, teachers, commercial fishers and trappers are excluded.