Inclement weather pay: do you get paid when work closes?

When a hurricane, blizzard or ice storm shuts your workplace, the pay question splits along one line: are you paid by the hour, or on a salary that makes you exempt from overtime? Hourly workers are owed pay for the hours they actually work and nothing more under federal law. If the store never opens, the day is unpaid unless your employer decides otherwise or a state law steps in.

Exempt salaried employees get the opposite treatment. If the employer closes for part of a week, their salary can't be cut for the closed days, although the employer can make them burn paid leave to cover the gap. Between those two federal rules sit a handful of states that pay hourly workers something for showing up and being sent home, and most of the arguments after a storm are about whether the weather lets the employer off that hook.

Hourly workers: a closed day is usually an unpaid day

The Department of Labor's Fact Sheet #72, written for natural disasters, puts the federal rule in one sentence: the Fair Labor Standards Act "generally applies to hours actually worked" and "does not require employers who are unable to provide work to employees due to a natural disaster to pay non-exempt employees for hours the employees would have otherwise worked." The same logic covers an ordinary snow day. No work, no wages owed.

The flip side is that every minute you do work counts. If you drive in, open up and get sent home after 45 minutes, you're paid for 45 minutes. If your manager asks you to answer customer emails from home while the building is dark, those are hours worked. If you're told to stay by the phone and be ready to come in within 30 minutes once the roads clear, that can turn into paid time too, depending on how tightly the restrictions bind you; the rules are the same ones that decide whether being on call counts as work.

Closures also wreck schedules for the rest of the week. When your employer asks you to make up lost hours, remember that overtime is counted per workweek, not per missed day. If the closed day and the make-up shift fall in the same workweek, the closed hours simply lower your total and the make-up hours may never reach overtime. If the make-up shift lands in the following workweek, it can push that week past 40 and earn time and a half.

Our view: if you're hourly, learn how your employer announces closures before the storm arrives. In the states with show-up pay, whether you were told to stay home before you set out often decides whether you get anything.

Salaried exempt employees: the salary holds, the leave bank may not

If you're exempt from overtime, your employer has to pay you on a salary basis, and the rule behind that, 29 CFR 541.602(a), is blunt: an employee is not paid on a salary basis if deductions are made "for absences occasioned by the employer or by the operating requirements of the business," and if you're "ready, willing and able to work, deductions may not be made for time when work is not available." A weather closure is an absence occasioned by the employer. So if the office closes Monday and reopens Tuesday, your salary for that week stays whole.

The leave bank is a different story. In opinion letter FLSA2005-41, the Wage and Hour Division said an employer may direct exempt staff to take vacation or debit their leave bank during a weather closure, "whether for a full or partial day's absence," as long as the employee still receives the full guaranteed salary. What the employer can't do is go further: the same letter says that if you have no accrued leave, or the debit would leave you with a negative balance, you must still be paid your full salary for a closure of less than a full workweek.

Two edges are worth knowing. First, the full salary is owed for any week in which you perform any work, but the regulation also says exempt employees "need not be paid for any workweek in which they perform no work." If a hurricane closes the business for an entire workweek and you truly do nothing, that week can go unpaid. Answer a few work emails during it and the full salary is back on the table. Second, an employer that docks exempt salaries for partial-week closures as a matter of practice risks losing the exemption for those employees, which can open up back overtime claims. That's why payroll departments tend to reach for the leave bank instead of docked pay.

When the office is open and you stay home

This is the case where exempt employees can lose money. In opinion letter FLSA2005-46, the Labor Department said that when an employer stays open during a weather emergency and an employee chooses not to come in, the absence counts as one for "personal reasons." Under 29 CFR 541.602(b)(1), personal absences can be deducted from salary, but only in full-day increments.

On a $1,000 weekly salary over a five-day week, a full day you skip while the office is open can cost you one day's share, $200. Leave at noon because the snow is picking up and nothing can come out of your salary for that half day. Miss a day and a half and the employer can deduct only the one full day. The employer can also take that day from your vacation balance instead of your pay, which many will do if you have the leave.

Inclement weather pay by state: show-up pay laws

Federal law has no reporting pay. Several states do, and they differ in how much they pay and, more important after a storm, whether they excuse the employer when nature caused the closure.

State	Minimum pay when you report and get little or no work	Weather or emergency exception in the rule
California	Half the scheduled shift, at least 2 and at most 4 hours, at your regular rate	Yes: Act of God, failed utilities, threats, civil authorities
New York (most industries)	4 hours, or the scheduled shift if shorter, at the basic minimum wage	None in the regulation
Massachusetts	3 hours at no less than minimum wage, if scheduled for 3 or more	None in the regulation
New Hampshire	2 hours at your regular rate	None for weather, but no pay owed if the employer made a good faith effort to tell you not to come
Rhode Island	3 hours at your regular rate if given under 3 hours of work	None in the statute
Washington, D.C.	4 hours, or your regular shift if shorter: hours worked at your rate, the rest at minimum wage	None in the rule
Oregon (large retail, hotel and food service employers)	Half your rate for each scheduled hour cut without 14 days' notice	Yes: natural disasters, failed utilities, threats, a public official's recommendation

Texas isn't on that list. Neither the Texas Payday Law nor the Texas Minimum Wage Act has a reporting pay rule, and the Texas Workforce Commission's employer guide on bad-weather days says hourly employees "may simply be paid for the number of hours they work," with pay for a closed day left optional unless the company has promised it in writing, in which case it "must be given according to the terms of the written policy."

California's rule sits in Section 5 of each Industrial Welfare Commission wage order. If you report for work and get less than half your usual or scheduled day, you're paid for half the day, never less than two hours or more than four. The Labor Commissioner treats this as a penalty rather than pay for work, so reporting time pay doesn't count toward overtime. The exception in Section 5(C) is the one that matters in a storm: no reporting time pay is owed when operations can't start or continue because of threats to employees or property, when civil authorities recommend closing, when public utilities fail to supply electricity, water or gas, or when the interruption "is caused by an Act of God or other cause not within the employer's control."

Read that exception for what it says. It covers a storm that stops the work: the power is out, the county has told people to stay off the roads, the building is flooded. A manager who sends you home because the snow kept customers away is making a staffing decision about a slow day, which is a much weaker fit. Here is a typical case at $18 an hour, scheduled for 8 hours and sent home after 3.

The California rule also only applies if you report. When your employer reaches you before you leave home and tells you not to come, you're owed nothing, which is why so many closure policies are built around an early text or phone tree.

New York's rule, in 12 NYCRR 142-2.3, covers most private industries outside hospitality and building services. An employee who reports "by request or permission of the employer" gets at least four hours, or the scheduled shift if it's shorter, figured at the basic minimum wage: $17.00 in New York City, Long Island and Westchester in 2026 and $16.00 elsewhere. The regulation has no weather carve-out. Restaurants and hotels fall under a separate hospitality wage order.

Massachusetts (454 CMR 27.04) requires three hours at no less than the state minimum wage when you were scheduled for three or more and don't get the expected hours; charitable organizations are exempt. New Hampshire's RSA 275:43-a pays two hours at your regular rate, but an employer that makes a good faith effort to tell you not to report owes nothing. Rhode Island's law (R.I. Gen. Laws 28-12-3.2) requires three times your regular hourly rate when you're given less than three hours. D.C.'s minimum daily wage rule pays four hours, with the unworked part at minimum wage. None of these four texts mentions weather.

Oregon is a different kind of law. Its predictive scheduling statute, ORS 653.455, covers retail, hospitality and food service employers with 500 or more employees worldwide and pays half your rate for every scheduled hour the employer cancels without 14 days' notice. It has an explicit exception when operations can't begin or continue "due to a natural disaster or a similar cause not within the employer's control."

Using PTO, and when unemployment applies

Hourly workers often have a better option than an unpaid day: paid time off. Many employers let you use vacation or PTO for a weather closure, and some require it. Federal law doesn't stop an employer from making you use it, since the FLSA doesn't require paid vacation to begin with. If your employer wants to draw on paid sick leave, check your state's sick leave law first, because those laws set their own rules on how accrued sick time can be used. Our PTO calculator shows how long it takes to earn back the hours.

Regular unemployment is a state program with its own rules for partial weeks, so a short closure is a question for your state agency. A long shutdown after a declared disaster is different. Disaster Unemployment Assistance, run through state agencies under 20 CFR Part 625, covers workers whose unemployment is caused by a presidentially declared major disaster and who aren't eligible for regular state benefits. The initial application is due within 30 days after the disaster is announced (later only with good cause), and the assistance period ends with the 26th week after the declaration.

What to check before the next storm

Start with the handbook's section on inclement weather or emergency closures. Look for how closures are announced, whether hourly staff can or must use PTO, whether the company pays for a closed day anyway (some do, by choice), and who counts as "essential" and has to report. If a manager promises pay for a closed day, get it in writing; a written promise is far easier to enforce than a remembered one.

Then keep your own record of every storm day. Note the time you arrived, the time you were sent home, any messages telling you to stay away or to be available, and any work you did from home. Your employer's time system may not capture a 6:40 a.m. text or an hour of remote work, and show-up pay and overtime claims turn on exactly those facts.

Last, check your pay stub for the period. Exempt employees should see a full salary for any week with a partial closure, and possibly a PTO debit. Hourly employees in California, New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, D.C. or covered Oregon jobs should look for a reporting or call-in line if they showed up and were sent home. If something is missing, ask payroll in writing and quote the rule.

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