Did salaried employees get a raise for 2015?

[Bikesy]

So I was doing some tax calculations for this year and couldn't get my numbers to work out correctly.  Turns out there will be 27 biweekly pay periods in 2015 rather than 26, an issue that comes up every 11 years.  My pay check for the last period of 2014 was the same as my first pay check of 2015 and there haven't been any apparent adjustments throughout the year.  So I guess my yearly pay for this year is 3.7% higher than I thought it would be.  Another interesting twist is that my company pays both biweekly and monthly, depending on what part of the country the employee is in.  So while I got a small "raise" for 2015, my colleague in another state who's paid monthly did not.  Anybody else notice this?  Doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things but interesting none the less.

[nobodyspecial]

But they didn't get paid for either the last week in 2014 or the first in 2016 ( depending on how the dates fall).

[Rezdent]

In years with 27 biweekly payperiods, either the preceding or subsequent year would have 25 payperiods, right?
That would smooth out the difference when looking at it over time.

I used to work in payroll and the last time this happened we had staff that were upset because their income was higher for that year, and they paid more in tax.  Yet they couldn't see that the next year would be lower with lower tax...what they saw was:

Higher taxes in the year with 27 checks - aaagh!  The company withheld too much tax!  My money was robbed.
Lower income in the year with 25 checks - aaagh!  This affects how much money I could borrow!  Now I will not be able to buy a home.  My dreams are crushed.

The reactions seemed really bizarre to me.

[reader2580]

I must be paid on the opposite week from the OP.  I won't have a year with 27 paychecks until 2021.  The strange thing is I have been paid on the same two week schedule since 2001 and I don't ever recall getting 27 paychecks in a year previously.

[Bikesy]

So I'm still thinking I got an extra paycheck this year without sacrificing one in another year, simply because I'm paid biweekly.  There is no such thing as a 25 pay period year.  So if I make $100,000 per year, in 2014 I'd make $100,000.  In 2015 I'd make $103,000.  And in 2016 I'd make $100,000.  Is this wrong? I've read some discussion on another site and it sounds like employers just eat the cost of the extra pay period to avoid employee relations issues involved with cutting pay checks or nixing one pay check in a 27 pay period year.  Like I said earlier, it has no real impact, just something interesting I had never considered.

[Rezdent]

It seems odd, yes, but it isn't really "extra".  It comes at the expense of either a previous or subsequent year.  Below is assuming that your company has a fourteen day pay period that never deviates.  If your company deviates depositing pay to avoid a holiday, then it may change the results.

This can be modeled in Excel.  You need three dates, start of pay period, end of pay period, and date of check.

It's the date of check that matters.  Assuming last year was a normal 26:

This year, check date will be in the last few days of December, making it #27.

Next year, Start/End of last check will be December dates, but date check received will be in the first few days of January, making it the next year's income.  So #26 would be pushed to #1, meaning 25 checks next year.

I don't have access to Excel to plot this out right now.

Edited for clarity.

[reader2580]

In 2020 I will get 26 paychecks.  In 2021 I will 27 paychecks.  I then get 26 paychecks in 2022.  I always get the same amount of gross pay on every check.  How is my employer compensating in 2020 or 2022 for my extra paycheck in 2021?

For some strange reason my paycheck lists my pay by an hourly rate even though I am salaried.  I was told it was a quirk in the old payroll system.  They replaced the payroll system and the hourly rate is still there.  I suppose they didn't want complaints about the data being missing.

[teen persuasion]

Look at it this way: 52 x 7 = 364.  So there is one "extra" day per year, and two in leap years.  Over eleven years you rack up 14 extra days, which becomes that one "extra" biweekly pay period.

You have earned that pay - you worked those weeks.  It is just a highly irregular (on an annual basis) quirk.

DH was a teacher, and they switched to a system where they were paid 21 times a year, biweekly, and not during the 10 weeks of summer vacation.  After a few years, an odd arrangement of very early or very late Labor days and shifting of the Regents exam schedule led to 11 week and 9 week long summer breaks.  His September paychecks started only after he had worked two full weeks (plus a week for payroll to go thru), but somehow he would still be working beyond the "final" payroll period of the school year.  It definitely felt like he was not paid for the last week or 2 of teaching, despite getting his allotted 21 paychecks.