Some Economics of Paid Sick Leave

Employers will often choose to provide paid sick leave to some of their employees. About 15 years ago, neither the US federal government nor state governments required paid sick leave, but about 63% of US employees worked in jobs that had at least paid short-term sick leave. Since then, 18 US states and lots of cities and counties have started requiring paid sick leave, and by 2023, about 77% of US employees had jobs with at least short-term paid sick leave. Stefan, Pichler Christopher Prinz, Stefan Thewissen, and Nicolas R. Ziebarth describe the evidence from the US experience, along with international comparisons and the underlhying economic tradeoffs, in “The Economics of Paid Sick Leave” (Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2026, 40:2, 215–42. I work as Managing Editor of the JEP.) Before the rise of US state and local government mandates for paid sick leave, the benefit was not distributed equally across the workforce. The authors write: In 2011, based on calculations from…