August Leave

Federal employees in August may have the opportunity to get away for one last vacation before the school year begins and work gears up for the fall. Under Office of Personnel Management guidelines, government workers are eligible for both annual leave, or vacation time, and sick days to take care of a personal or family illness.

Employees accrue annual leave based on how long they've been working in government. Full-time feds with less than three years of service earn four hours per pay period; workers who have between three and 15 years of service accrue six hours per pay period; and employees with 15 years or more of service and Senior Executive Service members earn eight hours.

Federal workers can save unused leave at the end of the year -- those working stateside can carry over up to 30 days while employees on foreign assignment can save 45 days. SES members can roll over a maximum of 90 days from one year to the next. Employees must schedule leave in excess of those limits before the end of a leave year, usually in late November, or forfeit the remaining days.

OPM policies also allow federal workers to take sick leave for personal illness or to care for family members. All full-time employees earn four hours of sick leave per pay period and have no limit on how many days they can use or bank at the end of the year. According to OPM, employees who get sick while on annual leave can petition to use sick leave instead. Workers also can request advanced annual and sick leave up to the amount they would earn in one year.

Under OPM guidelines, managers and employees are "mutually responsible" for scheduling leave around the agency's needs. Supervisors may ask employees how they plan to use their days off and in some cases can require documentation for sick leave or deny requests for annual leave.

Agencies can grant time off for a variety of reasons in addition to vacation and illness, such as funeral and bereavement leave, volunteer service, organ donation and jury duty. Under the 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act, federal employees also are entitled to 12 weeks of unpaid leave for birth, adoption or medical reasons.

A recent analysis from the American Enterprise Institute using OPM data found that federal workers receive generous leave benefits compared to private sector employees. Feds in 2005 used an average of 20.1 days of annual leave and 9.4 days of sick leave, which accounted for 7.7 percent and 3.6 percent of federal salaries, respectively, according to AEI. Government employees receive paid leave equal to approximately 16.5 percent of pay versus 9.5 percent for the private sector, the analysis found.

How do you use your annual and sick leave? Take our poll.