The Most Recent Data on Paid Sick Days

From our friends at the National Partnership for Women and Families.

In this most recent data, employers report that 63% of private-sector workers have access to paid sick leave (an increase of 1 percentage point from the 2010 data) – which means that more than 37 million workers do not have any paid sick leave. (But recall that, as IWPR’s 2010 analysis shows, there are more workers who have not been on the job long enough to accrue or use sick leave). In the new BLS data, gaps between the lowest- and highest- wage workers continue to be quite dramatic – just 21% of workers in the lowest wage decile (workers earning $8.25 hour or less) have access to paid sick days compared to 87% of workers in the highest wage decile (workers earning $37.89 or more). Only about four in ten of workers in the service industry (43%) have access to paid sick leave.