By Julia Goodman

Racial/Ethnic and Gender Inequities in the Sufficiency of Paid Leave During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from the Service Sector

Access to paid family and medical leave (PFML), including leave to care for a seriously ill loved one or recover from one's own serious illness, conveys health and economic benefits for workers and their families. However, without a national PFML policy, access to paid leave remains limited and unequal. Previous work documenting inequitable access by socioeconomic status and race/ethnicity primarily focuses on parental leave, measures theoretical access to paid leave rather than actual leave uptake, and lacks an accounting for why workers of color and women may have less access to PFML. We extend this literature by looking at leave-taking...

The Association of Paid Medical and Caregiving Leave with the Economic Security and Wellbeing of Service Sector Workers

Service-sector workers in the U.S. face extremely limited access to paid family and medical leave, but little research has examined the consequences for worker wellbeing. Our objective was to determine whether paid leave was associated with improved economic security and wellbeing for workers who needed leave for their own serious health condition or to care for a seriously ill loved one.

Paid Family and Medical Leave in the U.S. Service Sector

Each year, millions of U.S. workers experience the need for time away from work after welcoming a new child to the family or because of a health or a caregiving need. However, the U.S. is one of the few industrialized countries that does not offer comprehensive paid leave with job protection to workers. While some benefit from paid family and medical leave offered by a handful of states, the large majority of American workers have no such protections. Voluntary employer leave policies overwhelmingly benefit white-collar, salaried workers, leaving most low-wage workers unpaid and unprotected in the event they need time...