Paid sick leave, paid vacation, and consolidated leave plan provisions in the United States, December 2022

April 2023
Download 2022 Excel tables (ZIP)

Overview
Technical note
Glossary
Appendix table 1 - sample size
Appendix table 2 - survey scope

Overview

The National Compensation Survey (NCS) provides comprehensive measures of compensation cost trends and the coverage, costs, and provisions of employer-sponsored benefits in the United States.

The Excel tables (ZIP) present December 2022 estimates of paid sick leave and paid vacation plans by length of service requirement, and consolidated leave plan provisions. These estimates were not published with the National Compensation Survey: Employee Benefits in the United States, March 2022 due to the identification of anomalous data that impacted these particular estimates. A data improvement effort was undertaken for the December 2022 reference period.

Table 1. Average number of annual paid sick and vacation leave days by service requirement, December 2022
Number of annual leave days	Civilian workers(1)	Private industry workers	State and local government workers
Paid sick leave(2)(3)(4)
After 1 year	8	7	11
After 5 years	8	7	12
After 10 years	8	7	12
After 20 years	8	7	12
Paid vacation(4)(5)(6)
After 1 year	11	11	13
After 5 years	15	15	16
After 10 years	18	18	19
After 20 years	20	20	22
Footnotes: (1) Includes workers in private industry and state and local government. See the Handbook of Methods: National Compensation Measures at www.bls.gov/opub/hom/ncs/home.htm for further explanation. (2) All workers with fixed number of days per year sick leave plans = 100 percent, excludes workers with as needed sick leave and sick leave as part of consolidated leave. (3) Employees earn or accrue a specified number of sick leave days per year. This number may vary by length of service. Employees eligible for paid sick leave but who have not fulfilled the minimum service requirement are included as receiving 0 days. (4) Employees either are granted a specific number of days after completion of the indicated length of service or accrue days during the next 12-month period. The total number of days is assumed to be available for use immediately upon completion of the service (5) All workers with paid vacations = 100 percent. (6) Employees eligible for paid vacations but who have not fulfilled the minimum service requirement are included as receiving 0 days. Estimates include plans that are exclusively for paid vacation and vacation plans that are part of a consolidated leave plan that provides a single amount of time-off for workers to use for multiple purposes.
SOURCE: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, National Compensation Survey

Table 2. Consolidated leave plan provisions, December 2022
Access to consolidated leave plans(1)(2)	Civilian workers(3)	Private industry workers	State and local government workers
With consolidated leave plans
Percentage of workers	45	48	15
Paid mean number of days by service requirement
After 1 year	14	14	18
After 5 years	18	18	21
After 10 years	20	20	24
After 20 years	23	23	27
With no consolidated leave plans
Percentage of workers	55	52	85
Paid mean number of days by service requirement
After 1 year	9	8	12
After 5 years	13	12	15
After 10 years	15	15	18
After 20 years	18	17	22
Footnotes: (1) All workers with paid vacation = 100 percent. (2) A consolidated leave plan provides a single amount of time-off for workers to use for multiple purposes, such as vacation, illness, or personal business. Those with no consolidated leave plan often have access to standalone vacation plan. (3) Includes workers in private industry and state and local government. See the Handbook of Methods: National Compensation Measures at www.bls.gov/opub/hom/ncs/home.htm for further explanation.
SOURCE: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, National Compensation Survey

Estimates for prior years and additional benefits publications are available on the Benefits publications page.

For more information on benefits estimates, contact National Compensation Survey staff by:
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The contents of this publication are in the public domain and, with appropriate citation, may be reproduced without permission.

Technical note

U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) staff designed the survey, collected and reviewed the survey data, and prepared survey estimates for publication. For information about the survey design, concepts, and calculations see the Handbook of Methods: National Compensation Measures. The survey could not have been conducted without the cooperation of the many private businesses and state and local government agencies and jurisdictions that provided benefits data. BLS thanks these respondents for their cooperation. Additional information for survey respondents is available on the National Compensation Survey (NCS) Respondents page.

Measures of reliability

Measures of reliability are available for published estimates, which provide users a measure of the precision of an estimate to ensure that it is within an acceptable range for their intended purpose. For further information see Technical Information about Standard Errors for Benefit Estimates.

Interpreting the tables

All estimates shown in the table are based on the set of workers specified in the statement on any subsets indicated by footnotes. For example, the statement may indicate that "All workers with paid vacations = 100 percent.”

Average hourly wage percentiles

Estimates by worker average wage are grouped into six wage categories- the lowest 10 percent, the lowest 25 percent, the second 25 percent, the third 25 percent, the highest 25 percent, and the highest 10 percent. The categories use percentile values based on unpublished December 2022 wages and salaries from the BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation publication.

The percentiles are computed using hourly wages and salaries along with scheduled hours of work reported for individual workers in sampled establishments. Establishments in the survey are asked to report only individual worker wages and salaries for each sampled job. For the calculation of the percentile values, the individual worker hourly wages and salaries are weighted and arrayed from lowest to highest. The values corresponding to the percentiles are:

Ownership	Average hourly wage percentiles
	10th	25th	50th	75th	90th
	10th	25th	(median)	75th	90th
Civilian	$13.94	$17.00	$23.20	$36.53	$55.19
Private industry	$13.50	$16.55	$22.25	$35.03	$54.33
State and local government	$16.38	$21.25	$31.38	$43.71	$59.50

The lowest 10- and 25-percent wage categories include those occupations with an average hourly rate less than the 10th percentile value and 25th percentile value, respectively. The second 25-percent category includes those occupations with rates at or above the 25th percentile value but less than the 50th percentile value. The third 25-percent category includes those occupations with rates at or above the 50th percentile value but less than the 75th percentile value. Finally, the highest 25- and 10-percent wage categories include those occupations with an average hourly wage greater than or equal to the 75th percentile value and 90th percentile value, respectively.

Individual workers can fall into a wage category different from the average for the occupation into which they are classified because average hourly wages for the occupation are used to produce the benefit estimates.

Sample rotation

One-third of the private industry sample had been rotated each year except in years when the government sample was replaced. Beginning with the March 2022 publication, however, an additional (fourth) private industry sample is used in estimation to mitigate the impact of decreasing response rates. The government sample is replaced less frequently than the private industry sample. The state and local government sample was replaced in its entirety for the March 2017 reference period. As the sample is partially rotated each year and sample weights are updated for the reference period based on the Current Employment Statistics, the estimates are not considered a time-series.

Survey Methods

For technical information on survey methods, see the Handbook of Methods: National Compensation Measures. The Concepts section provides definitions for worker and establishment characteristics, including geographic areas.

Additional Information

For articles on employee benefits, see the Monthly Labor Review benefits section and Beyond the Numbers: Pay and Benefits, The Economics Daily and factsheets. Benefit publications from 1980 to the present are available through the publications archive. In addition, the benefits database may also be used to obtain data from 1985 to 2006 and 2010 to the present.

Glossary

Appendix table 1 - sample size

Appendix table 1. Survey establishment response(1), December 2022
Establishments	Civilian	Private industry	State and local governments
Total in sampling frame(2)	7,131,760	6,900,980	230,780
Total in sample	14,640	13,040	1,600
Responding(3)	8,380	6,950	1,430
Refused(4)	5,250	5,110	140
Out of business or not in survey scope	1,020	990	30
Footnotes: (1) The number of establishments is rounded to the nearest 10. Because of rounding, sums of individual items may not equal totals. (2) The sampling frame was developed from state unemployment insurance reports and is based on the 2017 North American Industry Classification System (NAICS). With some minor exceptions, an establishment is a single economic unit that engages in one, or predominantly one, type of economic activity. For private industry, the establishment is usually at a single physical location such as a mine, factory, office, or store; if a sampled establishment is owned by a larger entity with many locations, only the employment and characteristics of the establishment selected for the sample are considered for the survey. For state and local governments, an establishment can include more than one physical location, such as a school district or a police department. (3) Establishments that provided data at the initial interview. (4) Establishments that did not provide data at the initial interview. For information on nonresponse adjustment and imputation, see the Handbook of Methods: National Compensation Measures available at www.bls.gov/opub/hom/ncs/home.htm.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, National Compensation Survey.

Appendix table 2 - survey scope

Appendix table 2. Number of workers represented,(1) December 2022
Occupational group(2)	Civilian workers	Private industry workers	State and local government workers
All workers	145,429,400	126,545,100	18,884,300
Management, professional, and related	46,585,200	35,795,300	10,789,900
Management, business, and financial	14,660,500	13,161,500	-
Professional and related	31,924,700	22,633,900	9,290,800
Teachers	6,871,900	-	5,028,700
Primary, secondary, and special education school teachers	4,939,100	-	3,898,900
Registered nurses	3,048,300	-	-
Service	31,809,800	27,864,300	3,945,500
Protective service	3,565,700	1,636,700	1,929,000
Sales and office	31,433,600	28,865,200	2,568,400
Sales and related	13,362,600	13,283,200	-
Office and administrative support	18,071,000	15,582,000	2,489,100
Natural resources, construction, and maintenance	11,610,300	10,804,500	805,800
Construction, extraction, farming, fishing, and forestry	6,096,600	5,653,900	-
Installation, maintenance, and repair	5,513,800	5,150,600	-
Production, transportation, and material moving	23,990,500	23,215,800	774,700
Production	9,092,600	8,971,400	-
Transportation and material moving	14,898,000	14,244,400	-
Footnotes: (1) The numbers of workers represented by the survey are rounded to the nearest 100. For information on weighting, see the Handbook of Methods: National Compensation Measures available at www.bls.gov/opub/hom/ncs/home.htm. (2) The 2018 Standard Occupational Classification system was used to classify workers.
Note: Because of rounding, sums of individual items may not equal totals. Dashes indicate that no estimates for this characteristic are provided in this publication. Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, National Compensation Survey.

Last Modified Date: April 13, 2023