When does daylight saving time end this year and time goes back in 2024?

Even though Labor Day has passed and fall begins in less than three weeks, we are still more than eight weeks away from the end of Daylight Saving Time and the turning of our clocks back one hour.

Daylight saving time ends at 2 a.m. on Sunday, November 3, 2024, when the clock will be “set back” one hour and, in theory, give us an extra hour of sleep.

The amount of sunlight has continued to decrease slightly each day since summer began on June 20. The last sunset after 7 p.m. this year will be on September 17.

The amount of sunlight continues to decrease each day until December 21, when the winter solstice arrives at 4:19 a.m. Day lengths will then begin to increase until the summer solstice on June 20, 2025.

The flip side is that the sun will rise about an hour earlier each morning after we return to standard time in early November. On November 2, sunrise in New Jersey will be at about 7:29 a.m. and sunset will be at about 5:53 p.m. The next day, the sun will rise at 6:30 a.m. but set at 4:52 p.m.

So while millions of people will return home from work in near or complete darkness in November, their morning commute will include more daylight.

Clocks are officially “set back” at 2 a.m. on the first Sunday in November until 1 a.m.

Daylight saving time started on Sunday, March 10, 2024, and will end on Sunday, November 3, 2024, which is a period of 238 days. Since 2007, it has been in effect from the second Sunday in March to the first Sunday in November.

The next time change will be on March 9, 2025, 126 days after the previous one. Daylight saving time in 2025 will end on November 2, 2025.

The concept dates back more than a century, when English architect William Willett proposed the idea of ​​changing the clocks in 1907 in “The Waste of Natural Light.” The suggestion to use natural light more efficiently dates back to Benjamin Franklin.

During a visit to Paris in 1784, he wrote a letter to the editors of the Journal of Paris calling for a tax on all Parisians whose windows were closed after sunrise to “stimulate the economy of using sunlight instead of candles,” according to Michael Downing, author of Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time.

Daylight saving time became widespread in the United States when the Uniform Time Act of 1966 was passed. At that time, daylight saving time was enforced from the last Sunday in April to the last Sunday in October, and states could opt out.

In 1986, daylight saving time was changed to run from the first Sunday in April to the last Sunday in October. The most recent revision took effect in 2006, when the Energy Policy Act of 2005 changed daylight saving time from the second Sunday in March to the first Sunday in November.

Hawaii and most of Arizona do not observe daylight saving time. Daylight saving time is also not observed in the U.S. territories of Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The entire state of Indiana did not begin observing daylight saving time until 2006.

Eighteen states have enacted laws to make daylight saving time permanent. California voters have voted to authorize year-round daylight saving time. However, those changes require federal approval.

In March 2022, the US Senate passed the Sunshine Protection Act, which would end the twice-yearly daylight saving time change. However, the US House of Representatives did not put it to a vote.

A handful of Canadian provinces (most of Saskatchewan and Yukon) have adopted permanent daylight saving time, as have parts of British Columbia and two communities in northwestern Ontario.

About 70 countries observe daylight saving time. Most of North America, Europe, and parts of South America and New Zealand follow it, while China, Japan, India, and most other countries do not.

In other places, daylight saving time starts on different dates. In Europe, for example, daylight saving time starts on the last Sunday in March and ends on the last Sunday in October.