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On the low end, employers of minimum wage workers, who now earn $10.50 per hour, would have to contribute 0.6 percent of each worker’s pay, or about $131 per employee per year.
“It’s a very cost-effective program, it doesn’t require a lot of money to provide a whole lot of benefit,” said Jeffrey Hayes, study director for the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, the D.C. nonprofit organization that the District hired with its $96,000 Labor Department grant to model the plan.
Hayes used a series of sophisticated simulations to help determine how the District could afford to offer paid family leave for nearly all workers — full-time and part-time, and especially lowincome workers.