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5-5 2-2 schedule
Five on, five off, two on, two off. Fourteen days, seven of them worked, on eleven-hour shifts — and every other weekend off by design.
- Shift length
- 11 hours
- Cycle
- 14 days
- Average week
- 38.5 hours
- Days off
- 7 per cycle
What the 5-5 2-2 schedule is
Five shifts, five days off, two shifts, two days off. Fourteen days from start to repeat, seven of them worked.
The eleven-hour shift is what makes the arithmetic work. Seven elevens is seventy-seven hours a fortnight, which averages a little over thirty-eight hours a week — close enough to a standard week that it needs no unpaid gap, and short enough that the five-day break is genuinely free.
Because fourteen days divides evenly by seven, the pattern does not drift. Your days off land on the same weekdays every cycle, and every other weekend is off by construction rather than by luck.
How the cycle runs
One fourteen-day cycle:
Day shiftDay off
Print this rotation (PDF) One page — the cycle above, and a blank grid for your own dates.
Weekends off on this rotation
This cycle is 14 days, which divides by seven — so it lands on the same weekdays for ever and never drifts. Which weekends you get is decided by your squad, not by the pattern. Across the squads the answer runs from 0 weekends a year to 52.
A squad that does well on this rotation: 52 full weekends across a year. A weekend counts only when both the Saturday and the Sunday are free. All 21 rotations compared →
The five-day break is the point
Most rotations buy their long break by working longer blocks. This one buys it with a short second block: two shifts, two days off, and back into the five.
Five consecutive days off every fortnight is enough for travel, a course, or a stretch of paid duty work that a two-day weekend cannot hold. It is the reason officers who work it tend to defend it.
Where the eleven hours come from
Eleven is an unusual shift length and it is chosen deliberately. Twelve-hour shifts on a seven-day fortnight would give eighty-four hours and a payroll problem; ten-hour shifts would give seventy and leave the department short.
Some agencies pair it with a wellness allowance to square the remainder. Oakdale, Minnesota calls its version a wellness concept schedule and pays officers up to seventy-eight wellness hours in lieu of time owed.
Who works it
Departments that have published this rotation:
- Oakdale Police Department, Minnesota — 11-hour shifts, 5/5 2/2, every other weekend off
- South Lake Minnetonka Police Department, Minnesota — 2-on-2-off, 5-on-5-off on 11-hour shifts
- Municipal police patrol divisions
- Agencies running day, afternoon and overnight watches
- Dispatch centres covering 24 hours
The trade-off
What works
- A five-day break every fortnight
- Days off never drift — fourteen days divides by seven
- Every other weekend off by design
- Eleven hours is shorter than a twelve and still covers the clock
- Seven working days a fortnight instead of ten
What hurts
- Eleven-hour shifts are still long days
- Five shifts in a row before the long break
- The two-day block can feel like an afterthought
- Less common than 12-hour patterns, so fewer people have worked it before
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What Canadian law does to this rotation
The cycle is the same shape in both countries. What sits underneath it is not, and in Canada it is provincial rather than federal — so the same rotation can be worked and paid differently depending on where you are.
The daily ceiling follows your shift, not the statute. Ontario's Employment Standards Act caps the working day at eight hours or the number of hours in an established regular workday, if it is longer than eight. On a 11-hour rotation that established day is 11-hour, so the ceiling is 11-hour — the rotation itself sets it. Going past that needs a written agreement, and no agreement lets anyone be required past 60 hours in a week.
Eleven consecutive hours off between shifts is the ESA minimum and it applies whatever the pattern. A 11-hour shift leaves 13 hours before the next one is due, so this cycle clears it — but a held-over shift or a court appearance on the turnaround eats straight into that margin.
The weekly rest rule is the one long runs meet. The ESA requires at least 24 consecutive hours off in each work week, or 48 consecutive hours off in every period of two consecutive work weeks. This cycle runs 5 shifts back to back, so it is the two-week version that has to carry it.
Overtime is triggered differently by province, and this rotation averages 38.5 hours. The weekly threshold runs from 40 hours in Quebec, Newfoundland and Labrador, the territories and federally, through 44 in Ontario and New Brunswick, to 48 in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. Ontario and Quebec have no daily trigger at all; British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and the territories have both, so exceeding 8 hours in a day counts even if the week does not. BC adds double time past 12 hours in a day. Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador calculate overtime at 1.5 times the minimum wage rather than your own rate. Same roster, a different answer in almost every jurisdiction.
And one Quebec rule that catches shift workers out: premiums added to the hourly rate, such as night or evening shift premiums, are not taken into account when calculating overtime. Your overtime is worked out on the base rate, so a night premium does not carry into it.
Averaging is what makes a cycle like this work on paper. Where the pattern does not fit a calendar week, hours can be averaged over two to four weeks for the purpose of overtime, by written agreement. If you are in a union, your union can make that agreement with your employer — and in a policing or fire service it usually has, which is why your collective agreement rather than the statute is the document that decides your pay.
Two employers sit outside all of that. The RCMP works under one national agreement with the Treasury Board rather than provincial standards — its default workweek is forty hours from Monday to Friday with a workday of a minimum of eight consecutive hours, and separate articles for variable and shift work that take a detachment off that default. Federal enforcement uses a Variable Shift Schedule Arrangement, negotiated branch by branch, so two workplaces under one contract can run different rosters. In both cases the agreement is the whole answer and the province you live in does not enter into it.
Checked 7 August 2026. Provincial rules are quoted from the Employment Standards Act of the province named and, for Quebec, from the CNESST; federal provisions from the Treasury Board agreements. Employment standards are amended and collective agreements are renegotiated — check the current text before relying on a threshold or a figure.
Common questions
How many hours a week is the 5-5 2-2 schedule?
Seven eleven-hour shifts every fourteen days — seventy-seven hours a fortnight, or about thirty-eight and a half hours a week.
Do the days off stay on the same weekdays?
Yes. Fourteen days divides evenly by seven, so the pattern repeats on the same weekdays and every other weekend is off.
Is 5-5 2-2 the same as 2-2 5-5?
Yes — the same fourteen-day cycle, described from a different starting point. Oakdale publishes it as 5/5, 2/2 and South Lake Minnetonka as 2-on-2-off, 5-on-5-off.
Which departments work it?
Oakdale and South Lake Minnetonka in Minnesota both publish it on their own recruitment pages.
Put the 5-5 2-2 schedule on your calendar
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