The ability to take paid time off from work when faced with illness, to get needed medical care, or to provide caregiving for a family member is a crucial tool for enhancing the wellbeing of working people, their families, and the broader public. Workers who have access to such paid sick leave, or PSL, are more likely to take time off from work when sick (DeRigne et al. 2016; Piper et al. 2017; Schneider 2020) and access more preventative health care (Peipins et al. 2012; DeRigne et al. 2017). Workers with PSL also report better self-rated health, lower levels of psychological distress, and improved sleep quality (Stoddard-Dare et al. 2018; Collins et al. 2020; Swanson-Varner & Nadon 2024). The benefits of PSL extend beyond workers and their immediate families to reduce the spread of contagious illness in the population (Kumar et al. 2013; Pichler & Ziebarth 2017). These broad-based benefits provide compelling evidence of the public goods provided by PSL.
However, despite these well documented benefits, in the United States, federal law does not guarantee workers the right to paid sick leave. In the absence of federal action, over the past twenty years 18 states and nearly two dozen cities and counties have enacted and implemented laws that provide workers with paid protected time off from work to be used in the event of illness, caregiving, and other related purposes (National Partnership for Women & Families 2026). Collectively, state-level standards are estimated to cover 50 million workers (Maclean et al. 2025). Between 2014 and 2019 alone, the share of workers covered by such standards rose from 1% to 28% (Pomeranz et al. 2022).
Existing state and local standards generally follow a similar model across jurisdictions, requiring employers (with some tailoring of the requirements by employer size) to fund earned time off, generally accruing at the rate of 1 hour of earned time off for every 30 hours worked. While historically referred to as “Paid Sick Leave” ordinances given their coverage of paid time off due to illness, these standards generally allow for a range of related uses, including care for a sick family member, receipt of medical care, as well as absences associated with an employee or a family member’s domestic violence, sexual assault, or stalking. This broader set of qualified uses is important and recognizes the multiple sources of work-life conflict faced by working people. However, we focus specifically on paid sick leave in this report.
There is substantial evidence that this set of standards has improved workers’ access to PSL. A series of rigorous studies finds that following implementation, access to PSL increases by as much as 50% (Schneider 2020; Callison & Pesko 2022; Woods et al. 2023). Overall, while just 63% of private sector jobs offered paid sick leave in 2011, prior to the implementation of most PSL standards, the share rose to 77% by 2023. Recent evidence suggests that the effects of PSL mandates on coverage “spillover” to benefit workers in jurisdictions without mandates by shaping corporate practice (Schneider & Harknett 2025).
Suggested Citation
Papadopoulos, Mike and Daniel Schneider. 2026. “Benchmarks for Evaluating Compliance with Protected Time Off Laws.” Shift Project research brief.
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