The year 2009 or 2010 may bring an extra payday to employees.

Next year or the following, brings another possibility of an extra payday for many workers. Employees that are paid on a weekly basis and certain biweekly paid employees may have an extra payday depending if their employers chose to pay employees prior to or after the normal payday of January 1, 2010.  Since January 1^st is a federal holiday, employers will need to decide to pay their employees early (December 31, 2009) or after (January 4, 2010).  Based on this decision, the employees will have a 53^rd paycheck if they are paid weekly or a 27^thpaycheck if they are paid biweekly. If the employer chooses to pay the employees early then 2009 will be the year with an extra payday. If the employees are paid after the holiday then 2010 will be the year affected.

Not all biweekly paid employees will have an extra pay.  Only those employees that have a normal payday of January 2, 2009 will have this extra pay scenario.  If the biweekly paid employee is normally paid on January 9, 2009, then there is not the extra payday possibility.

This extra payday does not mean that employees are being overpaid. Employees that are paid on a per hour basis still worked those hours so they are not being paid extra.  However, employees that are paid based on an annual salary will be paid an extra paycheck which would result in a higher salary for the year. Due to this possibility we suggest that every employer review their compensation plans for the 2009 and 2010 years.