Where the data comes from
Public holiday dates, observed-day rules, and statutory leave minimums are sourced primarily from official government and labor-ministry publications — not aggregator sites or scraped Wikipedia tables. For every country we cover, the canonical source is one of:
- The country's labor ministry, employment standards body, or equivalent (for example, the U.S. Department of Labor; UK gov.uk holidays page; Korea Ministry of Employment and Labor)
- Statutory holiday legislation or gazettes published by the central government
- For U.S. state-level rules (California, New York, etc.), the relevant state labor commissioner's office
- For company-specific PTO claims, the employer's own published handbook or benefits documentation
When a fact appears in a Leavewise post that depends on third-party data we couldn't verify directly — an industry survey result, an academic study, a benchmark report — we cite the original publication, not the news outlet that summarized it.
How often we update
- Holiday calendars (national and observed dates) are refreshed each year in Q4 for the following year, and re-checked monthly for any substitute-day changes announced mid-year (substitute holidays, ad-hoc commemorations, etc.).
- Statutory leave rules are reviewed annually and any time a country announces labor-law changes that touch annual leave, parental leave, sick leave, or bereavement leave.
- Posts on regulated or sensitive topics (FMLA, ADA, fertility, divorce, caregiving, bereavement, sabbatical, layoff/PTO interaction) run through a monthly fact-check routine and are flagged for revision when an authoritative source changes.
- Travel-pricing and seasonal posts(cheap-flight roundups, month-by-month destination guides) are reviewed quarterly — or sooner if a major price-shifting event (a fuel surcharge change, an airline going under) makes a recommendation stale.
Sensitive topics: an extra gate
Some posts on this site touch areas where wrong information can affect someone's legal rights, health decisions, or finances — for example, FMLA eligibility, fertility-treatment timelines, divorce-related leave, miscarriage policy, or bereavement protections. These posts are tagged “sensitive” in our pipeline and are held back from automatic publication until a human editor signs off.
On those posts, you'll generally see explicit disclaimers that we are summarizing public rules, not providing legal, medical, or financial advice. Anyone making a real decision based on what we wrote should also confirm the rule with their HR department, attorney, doctor, or the relevant government agency.
How our tools calculate
Leavewise's calculators — the optimizer, bridge-day finder, unused-PTO value calculator, airport true-cost calculator, and others — are deterministic. Given the same inputs, they always return the same answer. The math behind them is documented inside each tool.
Where a calculator uses currency conversion, regional pricing assumptions, or salary benchmarks, those buckets are deliberately rough — directional, not live. We don't pull live FX or live flight prices into our calculators because that creates a false precision the inputs can't support.
When we're wrong
If you find a holiday date, statutory rule, or company-policy claim on Leavewise that you believe is incorrect, the fastest way to flag it is to email hello@leavewise.co with the URL and the disagreement.
When we confirm an error, we update the post in place, add a brief correction note at the bottom, and date-stamp the change. For material corrections to regulated-topic content (FMLA, parental leave, sabbatical law, etc.), we also flag the page in our monthly fact-check log so the issue doesn't recur.
We don't silently delete posts. If a post is taken down, the URL returns a correction notice explaining why.
AI & authorship
Some Leavewise content is drafted with AI assistance, then edited by a human before publication. Every fact a Leavewise post relies on — dates, statutes, dollar figures, company policies — is verified against a primary source by a human, not by the AI that produced the draft.
Calculators, optimizer logic, and tool code are written and reviewed by humans. Posts on sensitive or legally regulated topics (the categories listed above) are additionally reviewed by an editor before they go live.