Time in New York

Until 1883 every American town kept its own solar time, and New York's clocks ran about 12 minutes behind those of Boston. On November 18, 1883, the railroads switched to four standard zones, a date New Yorkers called the day of two noons, because the city's clocks were set back roughly four minutes at midday to match the 75th meridian. Congress only made the zones law with the Standard Time Act of 1918, which also introduced daylight saving for the first time.

The current daylight saving calendar dates from the Energy Policy Act of 2005. Since 2007, clocks move forward at 2:00 AM on the second Sunday of March and back at 2:00 AM on the first Sunday of November, a longer summer period than Europe's. In 2026 the changes fall on March 8 and November 1.

The New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq trade from 9:30 AM to 4:00 PM Eastern, and most offices keep roughly 9:00 to 5:00. London is normally five hours ahead, so the opening bell is 2:30 PM there and a 9:00 AM call in New York reaches London at 2:00 PM. For about three weeks in March and one week in late October the gap shrinks to four hours, because the US and the UK change clocks on different Sundays; the EST to GMT table covers those weeks.

Tokyo is 13 hours ahead during American summer and 14 hours ahead in winter. A 7:00 PM call from New York therefore lands at 8:00 or 9:00 AM the next morning in Tokyo, which is the usual window for transpacific meetings. Los Angeles is three hours behind all year, so West Coast colleagues are only starting work when Manhattan breaks for lunch.

At about 40.7° north, New York sees a moderate swing in day length. Around the June solstice the sun rises near 5:25 AM and sets around 8:30 PM, a little over 15 hours of daylight. In December sunrise slips past 7:15 AM and sunset arrives around 4:30 PM, leaving about 9 hours 15 minutes. The earliest sunset of the year comes in early December, not on the solstice itself, a small effect of the Earth's tilted, elliptical orbit.