Weekly payroll
A seven-day pay period producing 52 paychecks per year, common in construction and union shops.
Weekly payroll pays employees every week on a fixed weekday, producing 52 paychecks per year. It's the most generous and most operationally expensive cadence and is dominant in U.S. construction (especially union shops), commercial trades, and a handful of state-mandated industries. New York requires weekly pay for "manual workers" under Labor Law §191. Massachusetts requires weekly pay for hourly employees under M.G.L. c.149 §148. Connecticut, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont require weekly pay by default with biweekly or semi-monthly only by exception.
The advantages: faster paychecks improve recruiting and retention in tight labor markets; FLSA overtime calculations are trivially simple because every pay period is exactly one workweek; cash flow is smoother and more predictable for both employer and employee. The disadvantages: payroll processing overhead is doubled compared to biweekly; per-pay-period deductions (benefits, garnishments) cost more in administration; and the IRS deposit cadence accelerates because deposits key off pay dates.
Most small businesses outside the construction trades and the weekly-pay-mandate states default to biweekly because the operational overhead of weekly payroll exceeds the recruiting benefit. If you're considering weekly, do the math on the per-paycheck processing cost from your payroll provider and compare it to the likely retention improvement.