Employees at Russian enterprises who want to protect their earnings while on vacation should plan for non-holiday months. Anastasia Morgunova, co-founder of the online accounting firm My Business, shared this insight with socialbites.ca.
She notes that taking time off during months packed with holidays and weekends is not financially advantageous. This can be verified by simply calculating the cost of a single working day across different months. Morgunova explains that, legally, holiday and weekend counts do not reduce an employee’s salary.
In practical terms, an employee earns the same amount in a high-holiday month like January as in a quieter month like October, even though January typically features more non-working days. For example, if a monthly salary is 30,000 rubles, the value of a single working day will be higher in months with fewer working days and lower in months with more days off. Morgunova illustrates this by showing that a month with more holidays reduces the effective daily rate, while a month with more working days increases it, all else equal.
She adds that holiday pay is calculated based on average earnings over the preceding 12 months. Consequently, a vacation day taken in a month with fewer working days can be worth less than a day worked in another month with more working days, because it is tied to the average earnings rather than a fixed daily rate. This nuance means vacation time taken during shifts with lower daily value will yield lower pay compared to days worked during higher-activity periods.
Morgunova emphasizes that the most financially unfavorable period for taking vacation can shift year to year. In some cycles, the start of the year has fewer working days, which makes vacations there comparatively costly, while other periods with similar patterns may appear in the middle of the year. The key takeaway is consistency: plan vacations in months that balance holiday counts and working days to minimize income loss.
According to the expert, the months with the strongest takeaway for vacation in practice are those that offer a stable number of working days while not coinciding with peak holiday clusters. In contrast, months with scarce working days tend to magnify the impact of a vacation on take-home pay. For workers aiming to minimize earnings loss, the recommendation is to align vacation with months that typically present around average working days and avoid those with the most holidays clustered together. In such cases, the reduction in pay from taking time off remains small relative to the overall salary, as long as the chosen period does not drastically alter the monthly cash flow.
Additional context is provided by industry observations: holiday scheduling and pay calculations follow standard employment practices. A sizable portion of the workforce still faces decisions about when to take leave, weighing personal preferences against financial implications. The takeaway remains practical: understanding how monthly working day counts and holiday pay interact helps employees optimize vacation timing, preserving more of their earnings while still enjoying time off.
Previously reported information about holiday work patterns shows that more than a third of workers in the country continue to work during holidays, underscoring the importance of understanding pay structures when planning time away from work.