Join us for IWPR’s 2026 Power+ Summit, The Power Grid: Driving Gender Equity Forward, taking place September 28–29 in Detroit, MI.
Together, we will spark bold ideas, share breakthroughs, and shape the future of gender equity.
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.