How many business days are in a year?
A typical year has about 260 weekdays before holidays, but the final business-day count depends on where weekends fall and which holidays your calendar excludes.
Start with weekdays
Most years have 365 calendar days. Because there are seven days in a week, a non-leap year normally has 260 or 261 Monday-through-Friday dates. A leap year has 366 calendar days and can also shift the weekday total depending on which weekdays receive the extra dates.
That weekday number is not the final business-day number if your calendar excludes holidays. It is the baseline count before you remove federal holidays, bank holidays, company shutdown days, or local holidays.
Subtract holidays that fall on weekdays
U.S. federal holidays only reduce a business-day count when the observed holiday lands on Monday through Friday. If a holiday is observed on a Friday or Monday because the named holiday falls on a weekend, the observed weekday is the date usually removed from a federal-holiday business-day calendar.
Use the right calendar for the decision
A staffing plan, payroll calendar, bank processing calendar, and invoice follow-up calendar may not use the same holiday list. For general planning, a federal-holiday count is a useful baseline. For a specific obligation, the employer, bank, agreement, or official source should control.