One in Five Workers Lack Guaranteed Paid Sick Leave

Why It Matters

A new Congressional Research Service report on paid sick leave comes at a time when the federal government has no universal mandate on the books, and the Trump administration has shown little appetite for creating one. The result is a policy vacuum that states and localities have rushed to fill, producing a patchwork of rules that leaves roughly one in five private sector workers without any guaranteed paid sick leave at all.

The Big Picture

Access to paid sick leave in the United States is very uneven. The CRS report, published April 28, 2026, documents what advocates and critics alike have long argued about. According to Bureau of Labor Statistics data cited in the report, approximately 80 percent of private sector workers had access to paid sick leave as of March 2025. That sounds positive, but it also means tens of millions of workers, disproportionately lower-wage, part-time, and those employed by smaller businesses, have no such protection.

In the absence of a federal floor, states and localities have acted independently. The report catalogs a growing body of state and local earned paid leave mandates, each with its own accrual rates, employer coverage thresholds, caps, and permitted uses. The result is a compliance landscape that varies dramatically depending on where a worker happens to live and work.

The last major federal intervention was the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, a 2020 law that temporarily required paid sick leave for COVID-19-related absences for employers with fewer than 500 employees, paired with tax credits. That law has since expired. Since then, federal paid sick leave legislation has stalled, including proposals in the current 119th Congress to establish a permanent entitlement.

The report also examines what impact paid sick leave mandates actually have on employment and wages. Researchers found modest or neutral effects, countering the argument that mandates cause significant job losses. Some studies do find negative effects on hours worked for certain subgroups, and the report is careful to acknowledge that. But the broader picture that emerges from the evidence is that the economic doomsday scenarios predicted by opponents of paid sick leave requirements have not materialized in states that have enacted them.

The report also finds that workers do not systematically abuse paid sick leave when it is made available to them, and that these mandates are associated with improved public health outcomes, reduced presenteeism (attending work while sick or injured), and gains in worker productivity.

Political Stakes

For the Administration

The report is an inconvenient data set. The administration has pursued broad deregulation of the labor market and has shown no interest in new federal workplace mandates. The employer cost concerns documented in the report, particularly the proportionally larger burden on small businesses, offer some political cover for that posture. But the report's evidence on public health and productivity cuts against the administration's argument that such mandates are primarily economic burdens.

There is also a public health dimension that complicates the administration's position. The report's findings showing how paid sick leave reduces the spread of illness carry weight in a post-pandemic environment, and they come as the administration has been scaling back the federal public health infrastructure.

For Republicans

The report offers a mixed picture. The employer flexibility argument remains important, and the small-business burden data is valid. But the neutral impacts on employment make it hard to argue that federal paid sick leave legislation would be economically catastrophic. The political calculus for swing-district Republicans, particularly those representing working-class constituencies, is not clear.

For Democrats

The report provides a credible, nonpartisan accounting of the access gaps, the state of the research, and the scope of recent federal proposals. Democrats have perennially introduced legislation to establish a federal earned sick days standard, including versions of the Healthy Families Act. The CRS report provides those efforts with updated evidence.

For the Public

A worker without paid sick leave faces a choice between going to work ill or losing income. That choice has consequences not just for individual workers, but also for coworkers, customers, and public health more broadly.

The Bottom Line

The current system is leaving a significant share of workers without access to paid sick leave. State-level action has not solved the problem uniformly, and federal proposals to address the gap remain stalled. The research on employer impacts is more favorable to these mandates than opponents typically acknowledge, and the public health case for action is also documented.

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