Seasonal employment

How it works

A tax-season bookkeeper for a CPA firm can be seasonal if the season is real and they are let go when it ends. A year-round finance seat is not seasonal because April exists. For a U.S. company hiring one Filipino teammate, write this into the brief, the employment contract, and the peso payroll file before the start date. Slack habits do not override the Labor Code, BIR, or NPC. If the local employer of record holds the paper, they run the statutory step; you still owe a clean operating definition so the seat does not fail in week three. Put a number on the example when you budget loaded cost, because a nameless allowance always returns as a December surprise or a missed SLA.

Example: 1 January-30 April books peak, then off. Next January they may have seasonal recall rights in practice. Keeping them through November on Slack quietly makes them look regular.

How it differs

Project is a project. Casual is irregular. Holiday calendar peaks are not automatically a season of employment.

Common errors

Naming Q4 a season so you can drop people on 2 January.

In practice

Treat Seasonal employment as a week-one operating object. Ask who signs the notice, who remits, and who would answer DOLE. If three vendors each point at the other, you have a story rather than a file. Write an owner - founder, local employer, or worker - and a date you will look at it again: first cutoff, first holiday, or first miss. If nobody can show a contract clause, a payslip line, a calendar block, or a checklist box, you do not have seasonal employment yet. You have a conversation. Convert the conversation before the person starts, while changing the deal still costs a paragraph rather than a resignation. Re-read the worked example above against the actual hire in front of you. If the numbers in that example cannot be swapped for this seat’s pesos, hours, and start date, the brief is still unfinished.