The federal government’s bureaucrats are getting the rush delivery of a new and fully paid holiday from Santa this year! President Barack Obama signed an executive order back on December 5, 2014 giving all federal government employees an extra paid holiday this year on Friday, December 26, 2014.

Federal employees will be delighted to receive a Christmas present, of sorts. President Obama has signed an executive order Friday giving federal employees the day after Christmas off….

This means that most federal offices and agencies will be closed on December 26th. Since Christmas is on a Thursday this year, the executive order means that federal workers will have an extra paid holiday on Friday, December 26th.

That is in addition to the other 10 Federal Holidays for which federal employees were compensated for not working that were actually approved by the U.S. Congress. The Washington Post reports more about the bonus holiday for federal workers:

Most federal employees who will get a bonus day off on Dec. 26 due to an order from President Obama will be paid as if they had worked a normal schedule that day, and those who had already scheduled annual leave for that day won’t have to burn a vacation day.

President Obama’s executive order follows an online petition that claimed that one major benefit of awarding the additional paid holiday to the federal government’s very handsomely compensated bureaucrats would be to boost their morale:

“Federal Employees have dealt with pay freezes and furloughs over the past few years. Giving federal employees an extra holiday on Dec. 26th, 2014 would be a good gesture to improve morale of the federal workforce.”

In 2013, all federal government employees whose work was determined to be nonessential and who were temporarily furloughed as part of the partial federal government shutdown in October of that year were fully compensated for not working on any of the 16 days during which the federal government was partially closed, making the event something of a two-and-a-half week long paid vacation for those federal employees.

The perks of being a federal government bureaucrat just keep on rolling out!