Monthly payroll
A 30-day pay period producing 12 paychecks per year, restricted by most state statutes to executive and salaried roles.
Monthly payroll pays employees once per calendar month, producing 12 paychecks per year. Most U.S. state wage payment statutes restrict monthly pay to executive, administrative, and professional employees (the FLSA "white collar" exemption categories) — Illinois 820 ILCS 115/3 is a typical example. Paying non-exempt or hourly employees monthly violates almost every state wage payment statute and is essentially never used in U.S. private-sector small business.
Where monthly payroll does appear: senior executive salary at large U.S. corporations (often paid on the last business day of the month); board director compensation; consulting retainers structured as monthly fees rather than salary; and some international employer-of-record arrangements where the foreign payroll cadence is monthly even though the U.S. employee would normally expect biweekly.
For new small employers, monthly payroll is essentially never the right answer. The state-statute exposure alone makes it impractical; the cash-flow lumpiness for the employee makes it unattractive in any competitive labor market. Default to biweekly for hourly hires and semi-monthly for salaried hires; reserve monthly for executive comp and board fees only.