Working Days in December 2024

December 2024 has 31 calendar days, of which 9 fall at the weekend. It opens on a Sunday and closes on a Tuesday, and contains 5 Mondays — useful to know if your payroll or reporting cut-off lands on a particular weekday.

There are 2 bank holidaysin England & Wales this month: Christmas Day on Wednesday 25 December, Boxing Day on Thursday 26 December. 20 working days remain once these are removed along with the weekends.

That is 1 more working day than December 2023, which had 19. The shift is down to which weekday the month starts on and whether a movable holiday like Easter lands inside it.

Across the year, December has the fewest working days of any month in 2024in England & Wales — it is one of the lightest months, so build in extra slack for anything time-critical. The regions differ this month: England & Wales 20, Scotland 19, Northern Ireland 20.

For HR and payroll, the working-day count drives pro-rata pay for anyone starting or leaving part-way through December, and the number of Mondays affects weekly-paid staff and any cut-off tied to the start of the week. For project and finance teams, it sets the realistic capacity for the month before leave is even taken into account.

Working days are counted Monday to Friday, excluding the bank holidays shown above for the region you choose. Scotland and Northern Ireland carry extra holidays — Scotland’s 2nd January, St Andrew’s Day, and an early-August Summer holiday; Northern Ireland’s St Patrick’s Day and Battle of the Boyne — so a UK-wide team can have three different figures for the same month. Use the calculator below to count forwards or backwards from any date in December 2024.