Static educational checklist — not a calculator. No punch inputs, no short-week engines, no live idle / regular-rate math. Spot common FLSA § 778.218 “pay for certain idle hours” red flags: when payments for occasional periods away from work (vacation, holiday, illness, failure to provide sufficient work, jury, weather, funeral, and similar causes) may stay out of the regular rate, when routine or scheduled day-of-rest pay must stay in, and when payroll collapses those extras with unused-leave cash-outs, show-up, call-back, or on-duty waiting time. Distinct from the unused-leave / forgone-holiday, show-up / reporting, call-back, on-call / waiting-time, and premium-credit cheat-sheet pages.
Baseline — what § 778.218 covers (and does not)
Under 29 CFR § 778.218, payments made for occasional periods when the employee is not at work due to vacation, holiday, illness, failure of the employer to provide sufficient work, or other similar cause — in amounts approximately equivalent to the employee’s normal earnings for a similar period — are not compensation for hours of employment. They may be excluded from the regular rate under FLSA § 7(e)(2), and no part may be credited toward overtime due under the Act. The exclusion reaches absences that are infrequent, sporadic, or unpredictable (e.g. machinery breakdown, temporary lack of work, weather that blocks travel to the workplace, jury service, funeral, voting, certain leave under state or local law). It does not cover regular “absences” such as regularly scheduled days of rest, and “holiday” means a day customarily observed in the community — not an ordinary Sunday or day off. This page does not compute idle pay or regular rates — it only flags compliance red flags.
Checklist — idle-hours / occasional-periods red flags
Routine short-week or scheduled day-of-rest pay wrongly excluded from the regular rate. Flag “idle,” “downtime,” or “short week” GL codes stripped from the regular-rate numerator when the non-work time is a regularly scheduled day of rest, a standing reduced schedule, or other predictable / recurring pattern. § 778.218 reaches infrequent or sporadic absences — not the employer’s ordinary weekly schedule design.
True occasional idle (breakdown / weather / temporary lack of work) stuffed into the regular-rate numerator. Flag worksheets that fold machinery-breakdown pay, weather shutdown pay, or other sporadic “failure to provide sufficient work” payments into the FLSA regular rate when the amounts are approximately equivalent to normal earnings for a similar period and qualify as § 778.218 payments not for hours of employment. A blanket “everything goes into RR” macro does not cure a qualifying exclusion.
Jury / funeral / voting / similar-cause pay treated as wages for hours worked (or the reverse). Flag stubs that either (i) force jury-duty, funeral, voting, draft-board, school-activity, blood/organ-donation, first-responder volunteer, military-leave differential, or similar occasional absences into the regular-rate numerator when they meet § 778.218’s “other similar cause” and approximate-equivalence tests, or (ii) exclude formula “civic duty” stipends that are really production incentives or routine attendance bonuses. Substance and frequency control.
Idle / paid-absence hours padded into the overtime hours divisor. Flag payroll that adds unworked vacation, holiday-off, illness, jury, or shutdown hours into the hours-worked denominator used for half-time / regular-rate math, or that treats those paid absence days as FLSA hours worked for the § 7(a) 40-hour gate. § 778.218 payments are not compensation for hours of employment; padding idle hours distorts both the rate and the overtime threshold.
§ 778.218 idle payments wrongly credited toward statutory overtime due. Flag settlement sheets that apply breakdown pay, weather idle, jury differentials, or other occasional absence payments as a credit against FLSA overtime premiums owed for hours actually worked over 40. Exclusion from the regular rate and non-creditability toward OT track together — using the idle payment as an OT offset underpays.
Collapse with § 778.219 unused-leave cash-outs / forgone-holiday pay. Flag one GL code used for (i) accrued vacation / PTO liquidations and forgone-holiday patterns under § 778.219 and (ii) true occasional idle / failure-to-provide-work / jury-weather absences under § 778.218. Related doctrines, different triggers — a shared “IDLE” or “LEAVE” bucket hides which week’s dollars are a leave buyout versus an occasional absence payment.
Collapse with § 778.220 show-up / § 778.221 call-back / state report-time floors. Flag handbooks that relabel minimum show-up when little work is provided, after-hours call-back guarantees, or multi-state reporting-time / call-in floors as “idle pay” (or the reverse) to force a § 778.218 result. Reporting-when-no-work, call-back excess, and occasional absence payments are easy to conflate on the same stub.
Part 785 on-duty waiting / “engaged to wait” rebranded as § 778.218 idle. Flag weeks where compensable waiting time on the employer’s premises, restricted on-call, or other hours worked under Part 785 is coded “idle” so payroll can strip it from the regular rate or omit it from hours worked. § 778.218 asks whether a payment for an absence may leave the rate; Part 785 asks whether the employee was working. Different questions.
“Holiday” / Sunday / day-of-rest myths and approximate-equivalence gaps. Flag policies that treat every Sunday, every sixth day off, or every employer-invented “float” as a § 778.218 holiday, or that pay sporadic idle amounts far above (or far below) normal earnings for a similar period and still claim the exclusion. Ordinary community holidays and approximate equivalence to normal earnings are part of the test — a label alone is not.
Stub coding and record gaps on absence reason, frequency, and RR vs OT splits. Flag wage statements that never separate occasional idle / jury / weather / breakdown pay from base wages or true OT, missing absence-reason codes, destroyed shutdown / weather notices, and regular-rate worksheets that strip every “IDLE” code without an occasional-vs-routine or approximate-equivalence analysis. Record gaps turn every short week into a he-said / she-said § 778.218 dispute.
Educational checklist only — not legal advice and not an idle-hours / regular-rate calculator. Last updated 2026-09-08. Home · Cheat sheet · Unused leave · Show-up · StatutePay