Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Access to paid sick leave (PSL) is low and unequal in America. By 2019, 30 cities and 11 states had mandates requiring employers to offer PSL. Yet, little is known about the extent to which employers comply and how mandates affect workers in terms of access to paid sick time, reductions in working while sick, and the easing of burdens related to work-life conflict. We examine if Washington State’s PSL law increased access to paid sick leave, reduced employees working while sick, and relieved care burdens. We draw on novel national data covering 13,000 food service and retail workers collected before and after the Washington law took effect in January, 2018. We use difference-in-difference models to estimate how coverage, working when sick, and work-life conflict changed as a result of the law. We find that the law expanded workers’ access to paid sick leave by 16 percentage points (P <0.001). The law reduced the share of workers who reported working while sick in the month prior to survey by -14 percentage points (P <0.01). Finally, the law also served to reduce work-life conflict for Washington workers, especially for mothers, for whom work-life conflict declined by a third of a SD (P <0.05). The results are robust to alternative modeling approaches and sample inclusion rules and survive a set of placebo tests. Mandated paid sick leave increased access to paid sick leave benefits and led to reductions in employees working while sick. Covered workers also experienced reductions in work-life conflict, with the effects most pronounced for women and mothers. These effects are apparent in the period immediately following implementation.