Which Years Have 27 Paychecks? Every Year Through 2040

Bi-weekly: which years give you 27 paychecks

Two things in this table surprise most people. 2028, 2033, 2034, 2039 affect no weekday at all — if you read somewhere that one of those is a 27-paycheck year, it was wrong. And 2032 and 2036 hit two weekdays each, so in those years neighbouring employers on different paydays are both affected.

Weekly payroll: the 53-paycheck years

Weekly schedules drift for the same reason, one year in the cycle earlier or later. The pattern lands on the identical years, because both schedules are driven by the same 364-day arithmetic.

What the extra run actually costs

The cost is easy to state precisely, which is why it is worth doing before the year starts rather than discovering it in December. For one salaried employee on $60,000:

The two ways employers handle it — and which we would pick

Both are legitimate. They differ in who absorbs the cost and how visible it is to staff.

Our view: if you can absorb it, option 1 costs less in goodwill than it costs in cash. If you cannot, option 2 is defensible but only survives contact with staff if you tell them before the first reduced paycheck, in writing, with the annual total shown so they can see it is unchanged. Announcing it afterwards is where this usually goes wrong.

Where this actually goes wrong

The extra payroll run is the part everyone plans for. These are the parts that catch people out:

• Switching to ÷27 partway through the year. If some paychecks were already issued at the ÷26 rate, dividing the remainder by 27 overpays for the year. The remaining periods have to absorb the difference, not the original figure.
• Per-paycheck benefit deductions. A premium deducted every pay period is taken 27 times instead of 26 — employees over-contribute for the year unless the deduction is recalculated or skipped on one run.
• Annual contribution limits. Retirement deferrals set as a flat dollar amount per paycheck can overshoot the annual cap on the 27th run.
• Accrual assumptions. PTO accrued per pay period grants an extra allocation. Our accrual calculator lets you check the per-period figure against your policy.
• Believing a single published year. As the table shows, the answer is different for a Monday payroll and a Thursday one.

How we produced this table

For each year and each weekday, we find the first occurrence of that weekday in January, then step forward in 14-day (or 7-day) intervals to the end of the year and count the dates that land inside it. The table on this page is generated by that function at build time rather than typed in, so it is derived from the same code that powers the payroll calendar and cannot disagree with it. Our methodology page covers how we handle dates and holidays generally.

One limitation worth stating: this assumes a payday that stays on the same weekday all year. If your employer shifts paydays for holidays in a way that moves the underlying schedule rather than just the deposit date, count from your own calendar instead.