Leave Benefits in the United States
Released: 2010-06-17T00:00:00

In addition to their jobs, workers have obligations—civic, familial, and personal—to fulfill that sometimes require them to be absent from the workplace (e.g., to serve on a jury, retrieve a sick child from day care, or attend a funeral). The U.S. government generally has allowed individual businesses to decide whether to accommodate the nonwork activities of employees by granting them leave (with or without pay) rather than firing them. In other countries, national governments or the international organizations to which they belong more often have developed social policies that entitle individuals to take time off from the workplace for a variety of reasons. For example, workers in countries that are part of the European Union have a minimum vacation benefit with pay of some 20 days per year; in Spain, employees can take paid time off to perform jury service among other civic duties; and 169 countries guarantee women leave with income in connection with childbirth.

Policies specifically intended to reconcile the work and family lives of individuals—which include leave benefits, child-care subsidies, and flexible work arrangements—have garnered increased attention in the 30-member Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). In the United States, which is an OECD member, congressional interest has coalesced around family-friendly paid leave proposals. They would entitle individuals to time off with pay to accomplish parental and caregiving obligations (e.g., bonding with a newborn or newly placed adopted child or assisting a seriously ill spouse). Women are regarded as the chief beneficiaries of these proposals because

women are the typical informal (unpaid) caregivers to family and friends, and a majority of women are in the workforce, with both husbands and wives employed in about one-half of married-couple families.

Two approaches have been proposed in Congress to guarantee workers the right to take paid leave to attend to family and medical needs. One is an employer mandate (e.g., H.R. 2460 / S. 1152 ); the other, a temporary disability insurance program (e.g., H.R. 1723 ). In addition, the Obama Administration's FY2011 budget for the Labor Department includes a request for $50 million to help states plan and set up paid family leave programs. Relatedly, H.R. 2339 (The Family Income to Respond to Significant Transitions Act) would initiate a grant program to assist states interested in supplementing the income of parents who take leave for such reasons as the birth or adoption of a child, or to care for a newly born or adopted child, or who leave their jobs to care for a seriously ill infant.

While "[d]uring the past two decades, the generosity of paid parental leave has increased in all OECD countries, with the exceptions of Ireland, the United Kingdom and several countries with no legislation mandating paid leave [such as the United States]," the organization remains focused on leave and other policies thought to ameliorate work-family conflict. The continuing interest of these governments in encouraging more women to participate in the labor force is partly motivated by concern about the impact of population aging on the future labor supply, and hence, the future rate of economic growth, in member nations. The economic rationale underlying paid family leave is that it will increase the amount of labor supplied by women with child care (and increasingly elder care) obligations and thereby mitigate the slowdown in overall labor force growth.

In the United States, concern about an impending labor shortfall because of an aging population also contributes to interest in greater involvement of the federal government in the provision of paid family-related leave. So too does the end of years of escalating labor force participation by married mothers, especially mothers of infants. Most recently, a public health rationale has been added to the economic rationale for increased employee access to paid family-related leave. Specifically, the success of one part of the federal government's prescription for containing the spread of "swine flu"—namely, employees staying home from work to care for themselves or for a sick child—likely is dependent upon the availability of paid family and sick leave.

This report begins by reviewing U.S. government regulation of time off from work for any purpose. It then examines the incidence of paid leave benefits voluntarily provided by U.S. firms. Access to paid leave by various employee and employer characteristics also is analyzed. Estimates from a government survey of the direct cost to U.S. businesses of the different types of leave offered are presented as well. Indirect employer costs that might arise in connection with some types of leave more than others, such as the greater likelihood of hiring and training temporary replacements for employees absent because of maternity versus bereavement reasons, are not included. Neither are estimates of potential gains to companies (e.g., a more stable and experienced workforce, and increased productivity due to greater worker morale) and society (e.g., improved public health, lower formal caregiving costs, and broader participation in civic affairs).

Federal Laws Pertaining to Leave

By and large, the U.S. government does not require employers to offer employees nonwage compensation, that is, benefits (e.g., health insurance, retirement plans, and leave). The few employment-based benefits that Congress has mandated are social security, unemployment compensation, workers' compensation, and most recently, unpaid family-medical leave. An overview follows of past and present federal laws and regulations that relate to time off from work.

State statutes may require the provision of leave beyond that in federal law. Employers and unions may negotiate paid time off as a supplement to wages in collective bargaining agreements. Complete coverage of leave benefits that originate from these non-federal sources is beyond the scope of this report.

The Fair Labor Standards Act

The primary law setting standards for wages paid to and hours worked by most employed persons in the United States is the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Although people often think that the act regulates time not worked, the FLSA largely is silent on the subject. It does not require that firms provide employees time off for breaks (e.g., to use a bathroom), meals, illness, holidays, and the like.

Although the FLSA applies to both the private and public sectors, federal employees are entitled to "legal holidays" with pay as prescribed by the Office of Personnel Management under Title 5 of the U.S. Code. Holidays also may be designated in state and municipal laws or regulations. Private sector employers may choose to follow the public sector's holiday practices and pay their employees for the time not worked. If businesses voluntarily close on holidays, firms can pay an employee they require to work the employee's usual hourly wage rate because the FLSA does not distinguish holidays from any other workday.

The FLSA does require employees to be paid more than their regular hourly wage rate in another instance, namely, "overtime work." It is in connection with overtime that the act has become part of the debate over worktime flexibility to accommodate the family responsibilities of employees. The FLSA was enacted in 1938 during a period of extraordinarily high unemployment. Payment at one-and-one-half times an employee's standard hourly rate for working more than 40 hours in a week thus was required of companies as a penalty for extending the workweek of current employees rather than hiring unemployed persons. About 50 years later, Congress allowed employers in one industry—federal, state and local government—to offer employees time off in lieu of the overtime pay they had earned. That is to say, a government can offer its workers the option of taking leave in the future rather than immediately compensating them for overtime worked. Those who want to extend "comp-time" to the private sector began in the 1990s to put the worktime arrangement in a family-friendly context by arguing that it would afford workers the opportunity to accumulate hours they could later take off for caregiving or any other reason "if the use of the compensatory time does not unduly disrupt the operations of the employer."

Federal Contractor Legislation

In the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931 and Service Contract Act of 1965, Congress required that certain contractors pay at least prevailing wages and benefits to their workers employed on federal and federally assisted construction and service projects. The Wage and Hour Division in the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) develops "wage determinations." They list the wage rates and fringe benefit rates DOL determines are prevailing in a given area for particular jobs. Paid sick, vacation, and holiday leave are among the benefits that can be included in a wage determination.

Temporary Disability Insurance

No nationwide program exists that compensates individuals for wages lost while they are absent from the workplace due to short-term health conditions (e.g., childbirth, the flu) or injuries unrelated to employment.

It was during the severe depression of the thirties that the United States began its national social insurance programs of unemployment insurance and old-age insurance. Consequently, providing protection against costs of sickness that are more or less recurring regardless of economic conditions did not seem to have the same urgency as providing protection against cyclical unemployment and old-age dependency.

In 1946, however, the Federal Unemployment Tax Act was amended to allow states in which employees contribute to their unemployment insurance programs to use those contributions toward cash payments for persons unable to work as a result of temporary nonoccupational illnesses or injuries. California, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island passed Temporary Disability Insurance (TDI) laws during the 1940s. Two additional jurisdictions—Hawaii and Puerto Rico—enacted TDI legislation in the late 1960s.

Today, employees and employers contribute to four of the jurisdictions' social insurance programs. Rhode Island and California continue to rely on only employee payroll deductions. The governments usually do not make contributions.

Both employed and unemployed workers may receive TDI benefits. How this is accomplished varies among the jurisdictions depending in part on whether employers are allowed to substitute a private insurance plan for a state-operated plan. Most employees in the private sector are covered because the laws generally apply to businesses with one or more workers. Jurisdictions may cover their own government employees and the self-employed as well. The value of payments and their duration also differ by jurisdiction. In addition, the way in which TDI benefits are coordinated with employer-provided paid sick leave and other accrued leave benefits varies.

The TDI laws do not require employers to retain individuals on their payrolls while receiving benefits. However, employers must comply with other laws that regulate treatment of employees experiencing short-term nonwork disabilities.

Anti-Discrimination Legislation

The Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 (PDA, P.L. 95-555 ), which amended Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, makes it illegal for employers with 15 or more employees to fire, refuse to hire, or withhold a promotion because an individual is pregnant. The act further prohibits these employers from treating women who are limited in their ability to work because of pregnancy, childbirth, or related health conditions differently from other employees experiencing disabling medical conditions unrelated to work. If a firm has a policy permitting temporarily disabled employees to take sick leave, then it must allow a woman unable to perform her job due to pregnancy or childbirth to take leave on the same terms. Thus, a firm "must hold open a job for a pregnancy-related absence the same length of time jobs are held open for employees on sick or disability leave."

Title VII and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 do not require employers to provide leave to employees to attend to their own short-term illnesses. They also do not require employers to offer employees time off to care for sick family members. But, as in the case of a company with sick or disability leave benefits, a firm that has instituted a family leave policy is prohibited from administering it in a discriminatory manner. For example, men and women must be afforded the same opportunity to take the same amount of time off to care for their children under an employer's family leave plan.

Taking action against "family responsibilities discrimination" may be difficult, however, because "Congress has never prohibited discrimination based on caregiver status so such claims must be 'indirect' applications of existing prohibitions against sex bias, disability discrimination, and unequal pay." In May 2007, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission released clarifying guidance that addresses unlawful disparate treatment founded on sex-based stereotyping of pregnant workers and of employees who are family caregivers, disparate treatment of employees caring for family members with disabilities, and harassment that creates a hostile work environment for employees providing family care.

Relatedly, differences across states in leave benefit laws may make multistate companies susceptible to discrimination complaints for interfering with the rights of employees. For example, California's Family Sick Leave (Kin Care) law requires all employers in the state that offer paid sick leave to allow employees to use some of their time off to care for sick children, parents, spouses or domestic partners. But, in Minnesota, employers with at least 21 employees must permit them to use their personal sick leave to care for sick children. Such variability in leave policies also means that families have quite different options depending on the state in which they live.

TDI and Family Leave: California, New Jersey, and Washington State

In 2002, California became the first state to mandate a paid family leave benefit by establishing Family Temporary Disability Insurance, commonly known as Paid Family Leave (PFL) insurance. Beginning in mid-2004, both male and female workers could take up to six weeks of paid time off to bond with their new biological, adopted, or foster children. In addition, they became entitled to wage replacement while absent from work to care for seriously ill children, parents, spouses, or domestic partners. Employers may require workers to use a maximum of two weeks of accrued vacation time before drawing payments from the insurance fund. Like the state's TDI program, employers must make deductions from the wages of employees to pay for PFL. The deductions are deposited in the state's disability fund.

PFL must be taken concurrently with the maximum of 12 weeks of unpaid family-medical leave available to eligible employees of covered employers under the California Family Rights Act (CFRA). The act was passed in 1991 and amended in 1993 to conform to federal legislation discussed immediately below. The most noteworthy differences between CFRA and PFL/TDI are that the former provides workers at firms with at least 50 employees unpaid time off with the right to continued health benefit coverage and guaranteed reinstatement to the same or a comparable job; the latter provides almost all employees cash benefits during their short-term absence but not job protection.

Two other states have since enacted paid family leave legislation, although only one program is operating at the present time. In 2008, New Jersey enacted family leave legislation that, starting July 1, 2009, enables almost all workers to take up to six weeks of paid time off to bond with a newborn or newly adopted child, and to care for a child, spouse, domestic partner, civil union partner, or parent. Employers may require workers to use a maximum of two weeks of any paid sick leave, vacation time, or other leave before being eligible to draw payments from the insurance fund. As in California, which also is a TDI state, the New Jersey family leave program is funded by employees through payroll deduction and the cash benefits must run concurrently with unpaid job-protected leave taken under the federal Family and Medical Leave Act. In contrast, a family leave insurance program passed by Washington state in 2007, without a financing mechanism and with an effective date of October 1, 2009, is not currently in operation.. After a task force was unable to agree on a long-term financing mechanism for the program and in light of the state's budget shortfall, the legislature delayed implementation of the program until October 1, 2012.

Many more states have mandated the unpaid job-protected approach to family-medical leave found in the California Family Rights Act than have adopted the insurance approach. Some 35 states and the District of Columbia either proposed or passed unpaid job-protected time-off legislation shortly after the first family-medical leave bill was introduced in Congress in 1985.

The Family and Medical Leave Act

Congress passed and President Clinton signed the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA, P.L. 103-3 ) in 1993. Until recently, the federal law entitled eligible employees at covered employers to leave without pay for the following four reasons:

the birth of a child of the employee and to care for the newborn child, the placement with the employee of a child for adoption or foster care and to care for the newly placed child, to care for an immediate family member (i.e., spouse, child under age 18 or any age if incapable of self-care due to an activity-limiting disability, or parent) with a serious health condition that necessitates the employee's presence, or to care for the employee's own serious health condition (including maternity-related disability) that makes the employee unable to perform the functions of his/her position.

The FY2008 and FY2010 Department of Defense authorization bills added two other reasons for leave-taking under the FMLA: to attend to matters arising from members of the National Guard, Reserves, or Armed Forces deployed to active duty in a foreign country; and to care for members of the National Guard, Reserves, or Armed Forces and veterans who recently became seriously ill or injured as a result of their military service.

The latest Labor Department survey shows that the predominant reason for leave-taking under the FMLA in 1999-2000, at 49%, was to attend to the employee's own health (including maternity-related disability). Caregiving for newborn, newly adopted, or newly placed foster children followed at almost half the rate. About the same fraction of FMLA leave-takers used their time off to care for ill family members.

Employees who take leave under the act are generally guaranteed the right to reemployment in the same or comparable positions. Employers cannot retaliate against workers for taking FMLA leave by, for example, firing them. But, employers are allowed to terminate leave-takers for legitimate business reasons (e.g., the duties of the unit in which the employee works are outsourced).

Private sector firms that had 50 or more employees on their payrolls for at least 20 workweeks in the current or preceding calendar year must allow employees to take leave under the act if the employees worked for them at least 12 months, a minimum of 1,250 hours, and at a facility where at least 50 employees are employed by the firm within 75 miles. Regardless of their size, public sector employers (e.g., federal and local governments, Congress and its agencies) also must provide FMLA leave.

The act's 12 workweeks of leave in a 12-month period, firm-size threshold, and reasons for leave are minimum standards. Employees who work for employers that offer or are covered by collective bargaining agreements that include more expansive family-medical leave, or who work in jurisdictions that have enacted more comprehensive statutes are entitled to the more generous benefits.

The FMLA differs from TDI by being national in scope, providing more reasons for leave, continuing health benefit coverage for absent workers, and guaranteeing job security. The TDI programs, for their part, provide cash benefits and do not have firm-size exclusions. Employees drawing TDI benefits cannot be terminated, however, if they have not exhausted their entitlement to leave under the FMLA or comparable state laws.

The Birth and Adoption Unemployment Compensation Plan

President Clinton directed the Department of Labor (DOL) to propose regulations enabling states to utilize tax dollars accumulated in the federal-state Unemployment Compensation (UC) program to partially replace the wages of parents who opt to take time off to bond with their newborn or newly adopted children. The purpose of the Birth and Adoption Unemployment Compensation (BAA-UC) experiment, popularly known as Baby UI, was to allow DOL to determine if the availability of cash benefits to working parents within 52 weeks of the birth or placement for adoption of a child encourages long-term attachment to the labor force.

Unlike the FMLA, BAA-UC leave was not guaranteed nationwide and employers did not have to retain employees receiving BAA-UC unless they were also FMLA-eligible. The reasons for leave under BAA-UC were much narrower than under the FMLA as well. Alternatively, the firm-size requirements of the FMLA did not apply to BAA-UC, which was guided by the much broader employer coverage of the UC program.

DOL included model state legislation in an appendix to the BAA-UC regulations, which went into effect in mid-2000. The model Baby UI bill envisioned the availability of BAA-UC for a maximum of 12 weeks, and the time not worked would be counted toward the maximum duration of unemployment benefits. It also assumed that states would base the amount of BAA-UC benefits on the same criteria (earnings and employment histories) as their individual UC programs and would deduct other income (e.g., employer-provided paid sick or family leave and the value of employer contribution to disability insurance) from BAA-UC payments.

In commentary attached to the regulation, DOL noted that it was not imposing solvency requirements on states before their enactment of BAA-UC. The department stated its expectation that states would not initiate BAA-UC without first examining the impact on the solvency of their UC trust funds.

In late 2003, the Bush Administration rescinded BAA-UC as part of a review of all DOL regulations. The review was undertaken in the context of a recession having led to much reduced balances in state UC funds and a challenge in federal district court to the consistency of BAA-UC with federal UC law. The Bush Administration declared BAA-UC to be "a misapplication of federal UC law relating to the A&A requirements," which state that a person must be able and available for suitable work to be eligible for unemployment benefits. It disagreed with the Clinton Administration's explanation of the BAA-UC rule as "part of an evolving interpretation of the A&A requirements that recognizes practical and economic realities" (e.g., not terminating or denying UC benefits to individuals while they are awaiting recall to the firms that temporarily laid them off). The Bush Administration declared that

the intended recipients of BAA-UC generally do not meet this test as they have initiated their separation from the workforce and it is their personal situation, rather than the lack of available work, that has removed them from the labor market. Because the BAA-UC experiment is based on an assumption of increased future labor force attachment, the payment of BAA-UC will likely be made for periods where parents have completely suspended their labor force attachment. Indeed, in cases where the parent is on approved leave from a job, BAA-UC more closely resembles a paid-leave program than a UC program.

It further stated that "Congress intended the UC system to be subordinate to the main task of getting people back to work.... BAA-UC is not consistent with this goal since it encourages parents to refuse available work."

Some 24 Baby-UI bills were introduced in 20 states in 2001, the year after the BAA-UC regulation became effective. But no state had passed legislation before the regulation was removed in November 2003.

In light of the inaction of states while the BAA-UC regulation was in effect and the handful of states with TDI laws, they appear reluctant to require family-medical leave benefits by taking either an approach based on unemployment or disability insurance. The belief that higher taxes paid by companies located in states that adopt either approach—arguably putting them at a competitive disadvantage with firms in non-adopting states—might contribute to this reluctance on the part of individual states. The UC program is largely financed through state and federal payroll taxes of employers. And, three of the five states with TDI programs partly finance them through a payroll tax on employers.

The Incidence and Cost of Leave Benefits

Unlike the abundant data on wages and salaries, less information is available on the benefits paid to workers. According to the latest data available from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), benefits account for 30% of the total compensation (wages and benefits) of employees in the civilian economy. Leave benefits—which represent 7% of total compensation—receive short shrift compared to the information on some other supplements to wages voluntarily provided by employers. For example, the government's primary survey of the labor force—the Current Population Survey (CPS)—does not ask households about time off from work, while it does ask about health and retirement benefits. (These benefits respectively account for about 8% and almost 5% of total compensation). As a result, there is limited publicly available data on gender, age, and other demographic characteristics of workers by employer provision of paid leave.

BLS more often looks to employers for information on benefits because they "typically furnish more reliable information than households do on the details of employer-provided benefit plans and the employers' costs for providing those benefits." The National Compensation Survey (NCS) collects information from companies on benefit incidence as well as compensation cost levels and trends. Firm size, as measured by the number of employees, is one of the company characteristics for which the NCS obtains data. Again, employer rather than household surveys are a better source of size information. Although the NCS lacks demographic information on employees receiving benefits, it does afford data by job characteristics (e.g., occupation, industry, and earnings).

Some private firms conduct compensation surveys, but the results may be proprietary, very expensive to access, or not representative of typical business practices (e.g., if the survey covers primarily large corporations). For these reasons, the analysis below is derived from the NCS, and to provide demographic information, from the National Survey of America's Families and the Medical Expenditures Panel Survey. The latter two are nationally representative surveys of households in the noninstitutionalized civilian population, similar to the CPS.

Incidence by Employee and Employer Characteristics

In the Private Sector

More than three-fourths of employees at firms in the private sector are provided paid vacations and holidays, making these the most widely available leave benefits. (See Table 1 .) About seven of every 10 workers have access to paid funeral leave and time off for jury duty. Considerably fewer employees in the private sector—61%—have sick leave as part of their compensation package. Companies continue to pay almost one-half of employees who are absent from work to fulfill military obligations. Less than two in five workers can take paid leave for personal reasons. Employers in the private sector offer paid family leave to a very small percentage of their workers (8%).

As shown in Table 1 —regardless of the type of paid leave—it usually is true that

relatively more private sector employees in white-collar occupations (i.e., management, professional, and related; sales and office) than blue-collar occupations (i.e., natural resources, construction, and maintenance; production, transportation, and material moving) or service occupations (e.g., food, cleaning, personal, health, and protective service workers) have access to leave with pay; relatively more full-time than part-time workers receive paid leave; relatively more union than nonunion employees have the opportunity to take leave with pay; and relatively more higher- than lower-paid employees are provided leave as part of their compensation package.

In terms of company rather than worker characteristics, it generally is the case that—regardless of the type of paid leave—

relatively more employees of larger than smaller establishments receive leave with pay; and relatively more employees at firms in the New England and Middle Atlantic regions, compared to other regions, are provided paid leave.

The picture is more mixed for incidence of paid time off by sector of employment. Substantially larger percentages of businesses that produce goods rather than services offer employees leave for vacations and holidays. The opposite is true for sick leave. If government is added to the private service-producing sector shown in Table 1 , the gap in sick leave provision between the two sectors is even wider. In March 2009, according to NCS data, 89% of employees in state and local governments had access to paid sick leave. Federal employees similarly have near-universal access to paid sick leave as well as many of the other benefits for which data are collected in the NCS. They also are permitted to use their annual leave not only for vacations but also for personal reasons. In addition, they can use sick leave for family caregiving and bereavement. Some state governments also permit their employees to use sick leave for other reasons (e.g., family caregiving).

The generosity of sick leave varies by worker and job characteristics. In March 2009, according to NCS data, the average number of paid sick days earned by workers in the private sector was eight after one year or after five years of employment. While full-time employees are provided eight sick days, on average, part-time workers are provided six days. Although full-time employees are provided nine sick days after at least 10 years of service, long-time employees who work part-time schedules receive the same number of sick days as less-senior part-timers. Employees of firms with 1-99 workers are granted an average of six days after one year of employment and seven days after five years of employment. In contrast, employees of firms with 100-499 workers are granted an average of seven sick days after either one or five years of service while employees of firms with 500 or more workers are granted an average of 11 days after one year and 12 days after five years. The pattern of many more sick days awarded to employees of the largest firms is evident among workers with longer service as well: employees of firms with 1-99 workers earned seven sick days after they had worked at least 10 years, while those at firms with 100 or more workers earned 10 days after 10 years of employment and 11 days after 20 years of employment.

Among Working Parents

Utilizing data from the National Survey of America's Families (NSAF), the Urban Institute published information on the characteristics of working parents 18-54 years old with any type of paid leave. Significantly more fathers (83.5%) than mothers (76.2%) report having any time off with pay. Married parents (81.5%) are significantly more likely than single parents (73.8%) to have access to paid leave. Receipt of paid leave increases with age of parents and age of youngest child; as a result, it appears that "workers with a great need for leave—parents with very young children—are the least likely to have access to leave." Access to paid leave benefits increases in step with family income measured as a percentage of the federal poverty level.

Three other studies similarly estimated a direct relationship between family income and receipt of paid time off from work. On the basis of data from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth, 76% of families in the bottom quartile of the income distribution lacked paid sick leave and 58% lacked paid vacations at some point while employed between 1990 and 1996. In contrast, 40% of families in the top quartile of the income distribution lacked paid sick leave, and 41% lacked paid vacations. Similarly, results from the Kaiser Foundation's Women's Health Survey show that 64% of employed women with family income below 200% of the federal poverty level are not paid when they miss work to care for a sick child compared to 37% of working women in higher-income families. And, based on their analysis of 2003-2004 data from the Medical Expenditures Panel Survey, Clemens-Cope et al. estimated that while 81% of children in employed families with incomes at least 200% above the federal poverty level had at least one parent with access to paid sick leave, only 36% of lower-income children had one or more parents with access to paid sick leave.

Welfare receipt at any time significantly reduces a parent's likelihood of having paid leave, according to the analysis of NSAF data. But leave availability is greater among those no longer receiving welfare than among current recipients—with almost three in five working parents currently on welfare lacking any type of paid time off. The study's author describes the low rate of access to paid leave among parents currently receiving welfare as "troubling" because

These parents may be trying to move off public assistance. Without ample work supports, including job-protected leave, they may be unable to keep their ties to the labor market in the event of a family crisis, or even just a sick child.

The data from the NSAF (household) survey accord with that from the NCS (employer) survey in terms of the relationship of benefit access to hours worked and firm size. Employees who work fewer hours are less likely to be offered time off with pay, and the incidence of paid leave is lower at smaller than larger employers.

The availability of paid leave among working parents generally increases with job tenure. For poor working parents, however, access to any kind of paid leave is as likely for those with less than one year on the job as for those with two or more years of tenure. This might be the case if poor parents tend to work part-time, in service occupations (e.g., food preparers, building cleaners), or for small businesses—each associated with low provision of paid leave benefits (see Table 1 ).

A Detailed Look at Paid Sick Leave

The Medical Expenditures Panel Survey (MEPS), co-sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the National Center for Health Statistics, asks a nationally representative sample of households in the civilian noninstitutional population about demographic characteristics, job characteristics, and access to paid sick leave. In the following analysis of the household component of MEPS data for 2007 undertaken by the Congressional Research Service, individuals are considered employed if they had a job when they were interviewed or had a job to return to on the date of the interview. Sick leave coverage is for the main job held on the interview date. Self-employed persons and individuals who did not respond to the sick leave question are excluded.

About three in five workers (60.4%) reported that their employers provide paid sick leave. As also shown in Table 2 , relatively more employed women (62.0%) than men (58.8%) have sick leave in their compensation package—a small but statistically significant difference. Married persons (67.2%) also are significantly more likely than never-married individuals (45.3%), a group that could include single parents, to have access to the leave benefit.

Although more than 60% of employees age 25 and older receive paid sick leave, this is true for fewer than half as many younger workers. The high rate of part-time employment among young workers and the low incidence of sick leave among part-timers may partly account for this finding.

Similarly, Hispanics are significantly less likely to receive paid sick leave than the non-Hispanic groups. The industry employment pattern among Hispanics may contribute to this outcome, because they work at well above-average rates in a few industry groups where access to paid sick leave is limited (i.e., construction, agriculture, leisure and hospitality). As shown in Table 3 , the fraction of workers with sick leave in these industry groups was well below the average of 60.4% in 2007; 34.9% of workers in construction, 24.8% in leisure and hospitality, and 27.3% in natural resources had paid sick leave. (Leisure and hospitality is an exception to the above-average incidence of paid sick leave in the service-producing sector noted in Table 1 , as is the "other services" industry group that includes automotive repair and maintenance shops, beauty salons, and religious organizations).

MEPS data suggest a positive relationship between educational attainment and the incidence of paid sick leave. (See Table 4 .) Just 28.1% of employees with less than 12 years of schooling have paid sick leave, compared to 78.9% of those who completed four years of college. Occupational employment patterns may help explain this pattern because, as shown in Table 1 , employers generally require higher schooling levels for white-collar (e.g., professional) positions than for blue-collar (e.g., construction) jobs or service (e.g., hairdresser) jobs.

The MEPS data in Table 5 provide more detailed information on receipt of sick leave benefits by occupation than the NCS data shown in Table 1 . Persons in all but one white-collar occupational group report above-average access to paid sick leave. Persons in blue-collar occupations (e.g., automotive service technicians and mechanics, carpenters) and service occupations (e.g., nursing, psychiatric, and home health aides; child care workers) report well below average receipt of sick leave.

A positive relationship between employee earnings and the prevalence of paid sick leave appears in the MEPS data, which echoes the pattern found in the NCS shown in Table 1 . Just 15.6% of persons who earned $7.25 an hour or less in 2007 received sick leave according to the data in Table 6 . The share almost quadruples among those who earned between $7.26 and $23.00 per hour. The percentage of employees who had access to the benefit was still higher, over 80%, for those paid more than $23.00 an hour. Part of the reason low-wage workers are less frequently offered paid sick or other leave benefits may be that employers consider them more easily replaceable than higher-skilled workers in whom they tend to make greater investments (e.g., training).

Cost to Employers

Paid time off from work composes a considerable part of the employee benefit package. The cost to employers of offering leave with pay—$2.07 per hour worked on average in nonfarm private industries and state and local government—nonetheless comes in behind insurance ($2.50) and legally required benefits ($2.28). (See Table 7 .) If Congress were to pass either of two proposed paths to paid family-medical leave—a mandate, or a TDI program funded in part through a payroll tax on employers—one would expect the compensation costs of employers to increase. Because employees generally are no more valuable (i.e., productive) to businesses after imposition of a benefit, however, they have no economically sound reason to raise their workforce's total compensation as a result of either congressional action. Economists therefore theorize that firms will try to finance the added benefit cost by reducing or slowing the growth of other components of compensation.

BLS computes benefit costs across all surveyed employers, whether or not they provide the benefit. Therefore, the cost per hour worked will be affected by the incidence of benefit provision. Not surprisingly, then, in light of the above-described frequency of provision by type of leave, the employer's average cost per hour worked is highest for vacations followed by holidays. The lower incidence of sick leave benefits is reflected in its average cost being about one-third that for vacations and one-half that for holidays.

A good deal of variation exists between private firms and state and local government in labor costs for time not worked. The widest disparity between the two types of employers occurs in connection with paid sick leave: the time off allowed employees to care for illness or injury costs private firms 23 cents per hour worked on average; it costs state and local government 82 cents. Once again, this difference reflects the generally greater prevalence of sick leave among government workers.

Within the private sector, the cost of leave benefits per hour worked usually is less on average at smaller than larger companies because relatively few small businesses offer paid leave. (See Table 8 .) For example, the provision of paid sick leave at workplaces with 99 or fewer employees averages 14 cents per hour worked; at workplaces with 100 or more employees, 33 cents per hour worked. There is little variability in the average cost of sick leave provision between firms with 1 to 49 employees versus 50 to 99 employees. However, the average cost of offering employees sick leave almost doubles between firms with 100 to 499 employees and 500 or more employees.

Concluding Remarks

Access to the paid time off from work that employers voluntarily provide is not evenly distributed across employees. This unevenness appears to exacerbate wage inequality, with leave benefits more often available to higher- than lower-paid workers, to more- rather than less-educated workers, to white-collar compared to blue-collar or service workers, to persons working full- rather than part-time, and to employees of larger in contrast to smaller firms.

The U.S. government has a comparatively limited role in mandating or regulating leave benefits. The sole leave entitlement Congress passed—unpaid time off under the FMLA—has a long, hotly debated history. State governments have been more active in this policy area than the federal government. Nonetheless, very few states appear interested in enacting individually a family-medical leave statute that provides both cash benefits and job security. Businesses for their part have been loosening the link between employment and benefit provision in the last several years (e.g., the shift from traditional pensions to 401k retirement plans and ceasing to extend employee health insurance to retirees).