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Estimating Usage and Costs of Alternative Policies to Provide Paid Sick Days in the United States

Jan 19, 2017

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.