Note: This story was updated on Nov. 27 to add the 2023 leave year deadlines.

Federal employees will accrue up to eight hours of extra leave this year simply because of the way pay periods line up on the 2023 calendar. Like a leap year, it’s just the way the weeks map out.

For the year ending Jan. 13, 2024, there will be 27 leave periods, one more than there are pay periods — an unusual phenomenon that hasn’t happened since 2012, the Office of Personnel Management said in a memo.

Statutorily, federal employees earn annual leave for each biweekly pay period. In 2023, there are 26 pay periods, but one extra leave period, meaning a worker could get four, six or eight hours of bonus time off depending on how long they’ve been with the government.

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Here’s the catch: even though employees may have extra leave in their banks, the carryover maximum isn’t increasing with it. That means federal employees now have more leave that they must use by the end of the year, or they’ll lose it.

For most employees, they’ll forfeit any leave more than 30 days (240 hours) or 45 day (360 hours) for those overseas. The maximum is 90 days (720 hours) for the Senior Executive Service, senior level and scientific and professional employees.

If you’re thinking about how to plan a vacation to take advantage of this extra time away, there are five paid federal holidays remaining in 2023 and one in January 2024 that will be included in this leave year.

Employees have until Dec. 2, 2023, to schedule their annual leave.

Molly Weisner is a staff reporter for Federal Times where she covers labor, policy and contracting pertaining to the government workforce. She made previous stops at USA Today and McClatchy as a digital producer, and worked at The New York Times as a copy editor. Molly majored in journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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