CEO Library

The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) provides eligible employees with up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave per year. Existing evidence has documented that FMLA is associated with higher leave-taking and improved maternal and child health.

The executive summary of the 2018 Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) surveys that summarizes the conduct of the 2018 surveys and major findings.

The paper compares leave experiences of low-wage and non-low wage workers using data from the 2018 Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) Employee Survey. It finds that in some ways experiences are similar—both groups take needed leave at similar rates for similar reasons. In other ways experiences are very different and worse for low-wage workers—they less commonly have access to paid leave or are eligible for FMLA protections and more commonly face adverse financial and job consequences from taking leave.

Using data from the 2018 Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) Employee Survey, the paper explores patterns of needing and taking leave from work for a family or medical reason—either for one’s own health, or to care for someone else. The 2018 FMLA Employee Survey asks U.S. employees about their need for leave for a family or medical reason, whether they took leave, and their experiences while on leave—all for the twelve months prior to the survey. This paper begins by exploring patterns in needing and taking leave between women and men.

The brief uses data from the 2018 Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) Employee Survey and Worksite Survey to summarize findings on employee access to paid leave benefits, pay received while on leave for a family or medical reason, pay and unmet need for leave. It also describes variation in findings between states that do and do not offer paid family and medical leave.

The brief uses data from the 2018 Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) Employee Survey to summarize findings on employee leave-taking rates and characteristics of leaves taken. The survey asked about family and medical leave, both for qualifying FMLA reasons and for care of non-immediate family members with serious health conditions (which does not typically qualify). Other medical reasons that are not serious health conditions, such as a sick day for a cold, are not included.

The methodology report appendices to the 2018 Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) surveys that include employee survey materials, employer survey materials, revision matrices, nonresponse follow-up employee survey materials, and employer survey response option experiment (detailed findings).

The report of the 2018 Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) surveys, presenting findings, including comparisons between worksites covered and not covered by FMLA, between employees eligible and ineligible for FMLA, and over time.

The supplemental results from the 2018 Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) surveys that provide key definitions and detailed survey results, including both more detailed information underlying exhibits presented in the technical report and additional exhibits not displayed in the technical report.

The report for the 2018 Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) surveys that details the methods used to conduct the surveys.

The brief uses data from the 2018 Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) Employee Survey to summarize findings on employee eligibility rates, reasons for ineligibility, differences in eligibility by employee characteristics, and knowledge of their own eligibility.

The brief summarizes a simulation analysis of five different paid family and medical leave model programs based on working programs in three states and a federal proposal, all applied to the national workforce. The analysis simulates worker behavior and estimates how many paid leaves would be taken under each model, the average weekly benefit level for each leave, and the total costs of the benefits paid. The analysis estimates the cost of benefits in dollars and as a share of total payroll for the nation as a whole and across industries and establishments of different sizes.

The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) enables employees to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave. However, while FMLA has increased leave-taking among eligible workers, overall effects have been modest, perhaps because much of the workforce is ineligible for FMLA, and many who are eligible are unaware of the law’s benefits and eligibility requirements.

The participation rate of mothers in the labor force has increased significantly over the last four decades with an estimated 71% participating in 2014 compared to 47% in 1975. Similarly, the share of households with mothers of children under the age of 18 as the sole or primary income earner has grown substantially, increasing from 11% in 1960 to 40% in 2011.

Welcoming a new child commonly requires working parents to face challenging decisions related to balancing their career obligations with the extensive caregiving responsibilities of a new child. The brief explores the association between paid leave use and the employment stability of a specific group of parents, first-time mothers, using data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2008 Survey of Income and Program Participation’s (SIPP) Fertility History Module.

Workers who are 55 years old and over are projected to remain the fastest growing segment of working adults in the U.S. through 2022. Health, longevity, education, and attitude are some of the reasons for their continued labor force attachment. In recent years, older workers have also either delayed retirement or re-entered the workforce due to financial losses in the Great Recession. Older workers face different challenges and responsibilities than their younger counterparts.

The brief explores the distributional impact of three alternative policy models for providing paid sick days taken from actual policies in the states and a federal proposal selected to show a range of generosity of provision. San Francisco was the first U.S. locality to pass paid sick days in 2006. Their Paid Sick Leave Ordinance (PSLO) covers nearly all workers in San Francisco and provides up to five days per year for workers employed in small businesses (under ten employees) and up to nine days per year for workers employed in larger businesses.

Analyses show that providing paid sick days under any alternative model policy increases the amount of paid time workers are able to take for medical and family needs, as intended, at reasonable costs to employers, ranging from 0.10 percent to 0.29 percent of payroll according to the generosity of the model. Employers of different sizes and in different industries would experience a range of costs under each model.

To provide context for the discussions with individuals likely to use paid family leave benefits, researchers summarize some of the paid family leave literature. First, they provide an overview of the existing federal and state policies that support leave-taking. Second, they discuss utilization trends associated with state-based paid leave laws. And finally, they delve into barriers to use of these paid leave benefits.

The report details a study that uses the introductions of California’s Paid Family Care Leave Act (CA-FLI) and New Jersey’s Family Leave Insurance (NJ-FLI) to examine the effects of paid-leave laws on labor market outcomes for individuals who are likely to provide care to an elderly parent. A 2012 survey of employees in the United States showed that work leaves related to the health of a family member (parent, spouse, or child) were almost as common as leaves related to caring for a newborn child (Klerman, Daley, and Pozniak, 2014).

The report provides new evidence on Rhode Island’s (RI) Temporary Caregiver Insurance (TCI) law, which took effect in January 2014, based on a survey of small and medium-sized businesses in the food services and manufacturing sectors in Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachusetts that the researchers carried out in December 2013 (just before the law came into effect) and in January/February 2015 (one year after the law came into effect). The researchers collected information about firm characteristics and productivity, employee life events and workflow, and employer provided benefits.

The report provides quasi-experimental evidence on the impact of paid leave legislation on fathers’ leavetaking, as well as on the division of leave between mothers and fathers in dual-earner households. Using difference-in-difference and difference-in-difference-in-difference designs, researchers study California’s Paid Family Leave (CA-PFL) program, which is the first source of government-provided paid parental leave available to fathers in the United States.

Family leave provides an employee with a period of time off work to care for a newborn or a sick child, spouse, or parent. The 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) requires that employers provide 12 weeks of family leave to qualifying workers with a newborn or a sick child, spouse, or parent, but that leave is unpaid.

The technical report of the 2012 Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) surveys, presenting findings, including comparisons between worksites covered and not covered by FMLA, between employees eligible and ineligible for FMLA, and over time.

The executive summary of the Family and Medical Leave in 2012: Technical Report that summarizes the conduct of the 2012 surveys and major findings.