In the United States daylight saving time starts on the second Sunday in March and ends on the first Sunday in November, both at two in the morning local time. That rule has been stable since 2007, so you can work out any year’s dates from a calendar rather than memorizing them.
The rule that sets the dates
Congress set the current schedule in the Energy Policy Act of 2005, and it took effect in 2007. Before that, the change started in April, which is why older relatives sometimes insist you have the month wrong. The switch always happens on a Sunday at two in the morning local time, which is why most people wake up to a clock that has already fixed itself.
| Event | Rule | What the clock does |
|---|---|---|
| Daylight saving time begins | Second Sunday in March | Two in the morning becomes three, you lose an hour |
| Daylight saving time ends | First Sunday in November | Two in the morning becomes one, you gain an hour |
How to find this year’s exact date
- Open a calendar and find March. Count the Sundays. The second one is the spring change.
- Do the same for November. The first Sunday is the fall change.
- If you want an official confirmation, check time.gov, which is run by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the US Naval Observatory.
- For travel, confirm the destination separately. Europe changes on different dates, and the southern hemisphere runs on an opposite season.
Skip the sites that print a date with no source. The rule is the durable thing, and any year’s date falls straight out of it.
Places that ignore the whole thing
Hawaii and most of Arizona never change their clocks. Arizona has an exception worth knowing about, because the Navajo Nation does observe daylight saving time, which means a drive across northern Arizona can cross the time boundary more than once. The Hopi Reservation, which sits inside the Navajo Nation, does not observe it, so the map gets genuinely strange.
US territories including Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the US Virgin Islands, and the Northern Mariana Islands stay on standard time all year as well.
Why the rule keeps almost changing
Bills to make one time permanent show up in Congress regularly, and several states have passed laws that would lock them onto daylight saving time. Those state laws cannot take effect on their own, because federal law lets a state opt out into permanent standard time but not into permanent daylight time. That change needs Congress.
So until a federal bill passes and is signed, the March and November rule stands. If you hear that the clock change has been abolished, check whether the report describes a bill that has actually become law or one that merely passed a single chamber. Those two things get reported in nearly identical language, and only one of them changes your morning.
