This brief explores the costs and benefits of alternative sick days policies applied at the national level: San Francisco’s Paid Sick Leave Ordinance, the Vermont Act, and the proposed federal Healthy Families Act.

• Under three national paid sick days policies, paid and unpaid leaves taken increase from 9 to 13 percent.
• The cost of new paid sick days taken ranges from 0.10 to 0.29 percent of payroll across the three different models.
• Under all policies, workers take fewer than the maximum amount of paid sick days available.