Paid Leave 2100: A Slogan That Should Be Chanted by No One, Ever.

New Bureau of Labor Statistics Data Confirms that, Despite Flashy Headlines about Employers’ Paid Family Leave Benefits, More than 90 Percent of Low-Wage Workers are Left Behind

Photo by Khadeeja Yasser on Unsplash

Last Thursday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released sobering data on workers’ access to paid family leave as an employer-provided benefit: As of March 2020, prior to the pandemic, just 20 percent of private sector workers in the United States had access to paid family leave provided by their employers to care for a new child or an ill loved one.

Out of approximately 120 million private sector workers, just over 24 million have access to paid family leave — and more than 96 million do not. In total, more than 110 million people in the civilian workforce overall (private sector plus state and local employees) lack access to paid family leave because public sector workers’ coverage is also scarce, reserved for a privileged quarter or so (26 percent).

To be sure, 20 percent is progress — it’s twice the share of private sector workers who had access to paid family leave a decade ago, when just 10 percent had access to paid leave. But a decade’s worth of gains are unevenly distributed, and some of the most notable disparities in access by industry and wage level are greater now than in 2010.

At the decade’s rate of change from 2010 to 2020, and without government intervention, it will take 80 years for the average worker to have paid family leave — and much, much longer than that for paid family leave to reach everyone. Even using the most accelerated rate of change we have seen in the past decade (a 3-percentage-point jump in access from 2017 to 2018, and 2-percentage point jumps from 2018 to 2019 and 2019 to 2020), universal access is still decades away.

What’s more, despite flashy headlines when companies announce new paid leave policies, a catalogue of companies’ voluntary policies shows that employer policies often fall short by measures of time and equity. Even companies that offer paid family leave benefits often provide unequal amounts of paid leave time to new mothers and fathers, to new parents versus family caregivers and workers with their own serious health issue. Their offerings often also vary substantially for workers in different jobs. While some companies — like Adobe, Patagonia and Levi Strauss lead the pack — others fall woefully behind.

In short, there are no norms or baselines that employers must follow. Some companies are required to follow the Family and Medical Leave Act, the country’s federal unpaid leave law, which mandates that establishments with more than 50 employees within a 75 mile radius must offer unpaid, job-protected leave to covered employees. Unfortunately, stringent rules related to tenure, work hours and business size exclude an estimated 44 percent of workers, disproportionately women, workers of color, single parents and workers without a high school degree. The result is a patchwork that creates uncertainty and precarity, with the most vulnerable workers at the greatest risk of financial and family distress — including using emergency savings, relying on family and friends, going into debt and more — when paid leave is unavailable.

The slogan “Paid Family Leave 2100” doesn’t resonate with me — which is why I firmly believe the United States needs a national paid family and medical leave insurance program modeled on successful state initiatives and supported by the vast majority of voters in both pre-pandemic and post-pandemic surveys.

Here are just a few of the gaps and growing disparities in access to paid family leave revealed by the new BLS data that illustrate the need for a universal public policy:

• Massive disparities by wage level. According to the most recent March 2020 data, 38 percent of workers in the highest decile of earners (paid an average of $49.04 per hour or more) have paid family leave, whereas just 5 percent in the lowest decile (paid less than $11 per hour) do. This means that a typical worker in the top 10 percent of wage earners is 7.6 times more likely to have paid family leave than a worker in the lowest decile. In 2010, high-wage workers were more likely to have access by a smaller, but still egregious factor of six (18 percent of the highest wage and 3 percent of the lowest wage). Or, put more plainly, access has grown 20 percentage points among the highest wage workers, whereas it has grown by just 2 percentage points among the lowest-wage workers. Bigger picture, the point remains that all workers, regardless of wage level, are more likely to be without paid family leave than to have it.

• Industry chasms. Similar gaps and disparities are clear by industry, where knowledge-industry service workers are substantially more likely to have paid family leave than those who cook and serve their food. Workers in “information,” a broad swath of people in publishing, television, telecommunications, data and more, have the highest likelihood of having paid family leave at their jobs — 47 percent do (which is still not enough — that’s more than half that don’t have paid family leave to care for a new child or sick relative!), and their access has grown by a whopping 27 percentage points since 2010. Contrast that with workers in leisure and hospitality jobs, which include food service and accommodations. Here, just 9 percent of workers in leisure and hospitality establishments have access to paid family leave now, a paltry increase of just 5 percentage points over the course of an entire decade (and an inexplicable 2 percentage point decline since 2019).
• Full-time versus part-time work. Whether a job is full- or part-time triggers gaping differences in access to paid family leave — a significant finding given the effects of the pandemic on women scaling back work hours. In 2020, 24 percent of full-time workers have paid family leave compared to just 8 percent of part-time workers, making full-timers three times more likely than part-timers to be covered with pay in the event they need to take time to care for a new child or an ill loved one. In 2010, the gap was also pronounced (12 percent versus 5 percent), but it’s clear that changes in employers’ policies have disproportionately affected full-time workers while largely leaving part-time workers behind.

Explore more paid family leave access differences and 2010–2020 trends by job, worker characteristics and geographic area in a data chart here.

Despite overwhelming evidence that paid family leave disparities exist and are growing, opposition to the creation of a national paid family and medical leave program persists.

Some business-focused opponents of government intervention say the market will manage on its own, and that the costs of paid leave are too prohibitive to expect all businesses to offer it. They ignore evidence that paid leave helps businesses navigate employees’ needs, costs and concerns about affording replacement workers. They also ignore evidence from state paid leave programs, which demonstrate value for businesses and especially for small businesses.

Others, often those with business interests in the private insurance market, say insurers can step in to fill the gaps. But the most recent BLS data casts significant doubt on this point. If the short-term disability market is any predictor of how comprehensive paid family and medical leave policies might apply, then a voluntary private insurance approach is not the right solution.

According to the new BLS data, as of March 2020, just over four in 10 workers (42 percent) have access to short-term disability insurance through their employer, an increase in just 3 percentage points since 2010. The typical policy offered just 60 percent of a workers’ wages, rather than the 80 percent or more that experts say a strong policy should provide.

As with paid family leave, the highest wage workers are most likely to be offered employer-sponsored short-term disability coverage (70 percent in 2020, up from 61 percent in 2010), compared to only 8 percent of workers in the lowest decile of earners — and low-wage workers’ access has eroded in the past decade. In 2010, 14 percent of the lowest decile of earners had access to short-term disability insurance, amounting to a 6 percentage point decline; in fact, access has declined 2 percentage points just since 2019 for the lowest-wage workers, whereas it increased by 3 percentage points among highest-wage workers.

The status quo is untenable — and the pandemic has likely only heightened the economic vulnerability of working people and families when paid leave is unavailable. While some may argue that recovery from the COVID-19 recession necessitates belt-tightening rather than new public spending, the reverse is true: Paid family leave helps keep new parents and family caregivers in the labor force and promotes higher wages over time, thereby increasing tax revenues, shoring up Social Security and contributing to economic growth.

Congress recognized the need for pandemic-related paid leave in March, when it enacted the Families First Coronavirus Response Act. However, the leave provided is too limited in eligibility (excluding up to 75 percent of the workforce from the guarantees it provides), duration and scope (leave for health issues is capped at 10 paid sick days, rather than including an additional 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave as originally proposed), and availability (the program expires at the end of 2020). House Democrats included substantial improvements in the HEROES Act, which passed on a party-line vote in May (and included the same substantive proposal in their updated HEREOS proposal released on September 28), but there has been no further action in the Senate.

Fortunately, congressional support for the Family And Medical Insurance Leave (FAMILY) Act is growing close to a tipping point in the U.S. House of Representatives. The FAMILY Act would create a permanent national paid family and medical insurance program to ensure that virtually all workers and self-employed people in the United States up to 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave to care for a new child, a loved one with a serious health issue, their own serious health condition or circumstances surrounding a service member’s deployment or injury. Paid leave policy solutions are also part of the 2020 campaigns for President and Congress — and investments in the “Care Economy” overall is a pillar of Joe Biden’s plan for economic recovery.

Even the Trump Administration’s Department of Labor recently solicited stakeholders’ comments about paid family and medical leave. Among the 201 comments filed with the agency were heartbreaking and poignant stories of need from individuals and businesses alike; strong data-driven evidence in support of paid leave’s health and economic benefits; helpful data from states with paid family leave programs; and even constructive comments submitted by business associations that have traditionally held a hard line against federal paid leave legislation.

A decade’s worth of change has only yielded progress for some. We cannot wait until well past the year 2100 to be able to declare the United States a country that ensures paid leave for all.