Military Leave: What It Is and How It Works

As part of the military pay and benefits package, military service members earn 30 days of paid leave per year. You start at zero and for every month of military service, 2.5 days of leave get added to your leave account. It doesn’t stop, but the most you can carry over from one fiscal year to the next fiscal year is 60 days, except in certain, very limited situations where you can carry over more.

Reserve component members, including National Guard, also accrue leave at the rate of 2.5 days for each month that they are on active-duty orders. Reserve components have some special rules for how and when they can use their leave.

Service members are expected to use leave for any workday that they will not be available for work, as required by their command. They are also expected to use leave for any day that they leave the vicinity of their duty station, as defined by their command.

Special leave accrual update

The Defense Department recently implemented new provisions of the law for special leave accrual leave that a service member on active service may carry forward from one fiscal year to the next is now capped at 30 days. This is a change from the previous 60-day cap. The end of Fiscal Year 2023 (Sept. 30, 2023) was the first point in which the new 30-day cap affected the SLA leave that a member may carry forward into the next fiscal year. The standard maximum limit on the number of days of ordinary leave that a member may carry forward from one fiscal year to the next did not change and remains capped at 60 days. The combined total leave balance that a member with approved SLA leave may carry forward is now capped at 90 days (i.e., 60 days of ordinary leave plus 30 days of SLA leave).

The Department’s SLA policy includes a period of transition from the previous SLA cap of 60 days (above the normal 60-day carryover limit for a maximum total of 120 days) to the new 30-day cap on SLA leave for service members whose total leave balance exceeded 90 days on Dec. 31, 2022. The maximum transition period authorized by law expires on Sept. 30, 2026; however, this expiration date represents the maximum transition period authorized. The specific length of the transition period that may be afforded to an affected individual member is highly dependent on individual circumstances and may be less than the 3-year maximum authorized in the law.

Service members are encouraged to review the “remarks” section of their LES to monitor their SLA leave balances and to determine the expiration dates of their SLA leave to avoid forfeiting days of SLA leave.

When can you take leave

Service members may request leave at any time. Approval will be at the discretion of the command, based upon a wide variety of factors including operational requirements.

Some commands may have specified times when all or portions of the command can take leave at the same time. This is sometimes referred to as “block leave” and may happen before or after a deployment or during a holiday period. Commonly, block leave time is allowed during the summer and Christmas holidays, and before and after deployments.

You’ve earned it – Use your leave or lose it

Leave time continues to add up as earned, but there is a limit to how much leave can be carried over from one fiscal year to another. Typically, if you have accrued more than two months of unused leave, you lose any amount that exceeds 60 days at the end of the fiscal year, Sept. 30.

A service member may be authorized to carry over more than 60 days of leave for a period of time. This is called a special leave accrual and is usually authorized due to deployment to certain areas of the world, assignment to certain designated units or operational requirements that prevent the service member from taking leave.