Paid Leave Benefits When You Are Unable to Work

Many American workers have lost jobs or had their work hours reduced as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and response efforts. Many other workers still have jobs, but their work environment probably has changed since March. It’s reasonable to assume more people are working from home now than the 29 percent we reported who could work at home in 2017–18. At BLS we are still working to provide you with the latest economic data and analysis, but nearly all of us are now working from home, instead of in our offices.

Still, there are many jobs that just can’t be done from home. In these challenging times, I know we all are grateful for the healthcare workers who are treating patients who have COVID-19 and other medical conditions. We’re grateful for our emergency responders and for the truck drivers, warehouse workers, delivery workers, and staff in grocery stores, pharmacies, and other retail establishments that provide us with the necessities of daily life. As much as I think of these men and women as superheroes, I know they are humans. Even extraordinary humans can get sick, or they may need to take care of family members who get sick. Let’s look at the leave benefits available to them if they need it.

According to our National Compensation Survey, 73 percent of private industry workers were covered by paid sick leave in 2019. Among state and local government workers, 91 percent were covered by paid sick leave. The availability of sick leave benefits varied by occupation, ranging from 94 percent of managers in private industry to 56 percent of workers in construction and extraction occupations.

The share with paid sick leave also varies by industry, pay level, size of establishment, and other characteristics of jobs and employers. The following chart shows sick leave availability for employers of different sizes.

Editor’s note: Data for this chart are available in the table below.

Paid sick leave plans commonly provide a fixed number of days per year. The number of days may vary by the worker’s length of service with the employer. The average in private industry in 2019 was 7 paid sick leave days.

Editor’s note: Data for this chart are available in the table below.

About half of workers with such a plan could carry over unused days from year to year.

We recently posted a new fact sheet on paid sick leave that provides even more detail.

In the past few years, some states and cities have mandated that certain employers provide their workers with paid sick leave. We include these mandated plans in our data on paid leave. A Federal law passed in March 2020 requires paid sick leave for certain workers affected by COVID-19.

In addition to paid sick leave, some employers offer a short-term disability insurance plan when employees can’t work because of illness. These plans are sometimes called sickness and accident insurance plans. This was traditionally a blue-collar or union benefit, and it often replaces only a portion of an employee’s pay. In 2019, 42 percent of private industry workers had access to such a benefit. Like sick leave, the availability of short-term disability benefits varies widely across worker groups. Some states provide Temporary Disability Insurance plans that provide similar benefits.

While the National Compensation Survey asks employers what benefits they offer to workers, the American Time Use Survey recently asked workers whether paid leave is available from their employer and whether they used it. In 2017–18, two-thirds of workers had access to paid leave at their jobs. These data include information on age, sex, and other characteristics. For example, younger workers (ages 15–24) and older workers (age 65 and older) were less likely to have access to paid leave than were other workers.

Editor’s note: Data for this chart are available in the table below.

While the survey did not ask workers to classify the type of leave, they were asked the reasons they could take leave. Of those with paid leave available, 94 percent could use it for their own illness or medical care, and 78 percent could use it for the illness or medical care of another family member.

I hope you and your loved ones remain healthy and are able to take care of each other in these challenging times. High-quality data will be vital in the public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic. High-quality data also will be vital for measuring the economic impact of the pandemic and recovery from it. My colleagues at BLS and our fellow U.S. statistical agencies remain on the job to provide you with gold standard data.