Whether you get paid during a leave of absence depends on where the money comes from, because no federal law requires your employer to keep your paycheck running. The Family and Medical Leave Act protects your job for up to 12 weeks but says the leave itself can be unpaid.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 USC 2612 – Leave Requirement Income during your time off, if any, comes from a stack of other sources: accrued paid time off, employer-sponsored disability or parental leave, a state paid leave fund, or workers’ compensation if your reason for being out is job-related. Which of those layers apply to you decides whether checks keep arriving.
FMLA Protects Your Job, Not Your Paycheck
The FMLA gives eligible employees up to 12 workweeks of leave in a 12-month period for a serious personal health condition, to care for a spouse, child, or parent with a serious health condition, for the birth or placement of a child, or for certain military-related needs. The statute states plainly that this leave “may consist of unpaid leave.”1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 USC 2612 – Leave Requirement What you get in return for that unpaid time is a guarantee that you can come back to the same position, or an equivalent one, at the same pay and benefits.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 USC 2614 – Employment and Benefits Protection
FMLA also does not cover everyone. You must have worked for your employer for at least 12 months, logged at least 1,250 hours in the previous 12-month period, and work at a location where the employer has at least 50 employees within 75 miles.3GovInfo. 29 USC 2611 – Definitions Small-business employees, part-timers under the hours threshold, and new hires often fall outside its reach entirely. Some state leave laws set lower thresholds, so it is worth checking your state before assuming you have no coverage.
Using PTO and Sick Days During Leave
For most workers, accrued paid leave is the first and simplest source of income during time off. The FMLA lets you substitute vacation, sick days, or PTO for what would otherwise be unpaid FMLA time. Here is the catch: your employer can also require you to use up that balance before you shift to unpaid status.4eCFR. 29 CFR 825.207 – Substitution of Paid Leave
Either way, the FMLA clock runs concurrently. Burning your PTO does not add days to your 12 weeks of job protection; it just changes which weeks are paid and which are not. Once the bank hits zero, the rest of the leave is unpaid unless a disability policy or state program picks up.
State Paid Family and Medical Leave Programs
More than a dozen states and the District of Columbia now run mandatory paid family and medical leave programs that do what federal law does not, replacing part of your income while you are out.5U.S. Department of Labor. Paid Leave These work like social insurance. You, and sometimes your employer, pay a small percentage of wages into a state fund through payroll deductions. When a qualifying event happens, you file a claim with the state agency, not your employer, and benefits are paid from the fund.
Wage replacement usually lands between 60% and 90% of your average weekly wage, subject to a cap. Weekly maximums in 2026 run from around $1,100 in lower-cost states to over $1,700 in higher-cost ones. Because the money comes from the state, it does not depend on your employer’s ability to keep paying you, which matters if you work for a small or struggling company.
Eligibility tends to be broader than FMLA. Many state programs cover employers with as few as one employee, and some let self-employed workers and independent contractors opt in voluntarily by paying premiums and meeting a minimum work threshold in the state. If you are a freelancer or gig worker with no federal safety net at all, that opt-in may be your only paid-leave option.
Filing usually means submitting an online application with medical certification or proof of the qualifying event, such as a birth certificate or provider statement. Plan for a gap of a week or more before the first payment arrives.
Employer Disability and Parental Leave
If you live in a state without a paid leave program, employer-sponsored benefits are often the only realistic source of income while you are out. The details live in your employee handbook or benefits documents, not in any statute.
Short-Term and Long-Term Disability Insurance
Disability insurance is the most common employer-provided income replacement for medical leave. The median wage replacement rate for both short-term and long-term plans is 60% of regular earnings. Short-term policies typically pay for up to 26 weeks; long-term policies then take over and can run for years or until retirement.6U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Disability Insurance Plans – Trends in Employee Access and Employer Costs
Most short-term policies also have an elimination period, often around seven days, before benefits start. You are expected to cover that gap with sick leave or PTO. If your balance is empty, those first days are just unpaid. Pre-existing condition exclusions can limit coverage too: if you were treated for the same condition shortly before enrolling, the insurer may deny or delay your claim.
Parental Leave Policies
A growing number of employers offer dedicated parental leave beyond what disability insurance covers, with full or partial pay for a set number of weeks after a birth or adoption. These are contractual benefits rather than legal requirements in most places, so the terms depend entirely on the policy. If your employer promises paid parental leave in writing and then refuses to honor it, that is a potential breach of contract worth raising with HR or an employment attorney.
Workers’ Compensation for Job-Related Leave
If the reason you are out is a work-related injury or illness, workers’ compensation is a separate system from FMLA and disability insurance, and it does pay wages. Every state requires most employers to carry coverage. The typical benefit is about two-thirds of your pre-injury wages, with exact rates and caps set by state law. You generally do not need to meet a minimum tenure or hours requirement to qualify. The injury just needs to arise out of your work.
Workers’ comp also covers your medical treatment, which disability insurance does not. The trade-off is that accepting benefits usually bars you from suing your employer for the injury. If the claim is disputed or denied, you can appeal through your state workers’ compensation board. Disputes are common for repetitive stress and gradual-onset conditions, so thorough medical records from the start make a real difference.
Pay for Jury Duty, Military Service, and Voting
Civic leave follows different rules from medical or family leave, and it is where a lot of the confusion about “paid” leave comes from.
For federal jury duty, the court pays jurors $50 per day of attendance, and a judge can authorize an additional $10 per day if a trial runs longer than ten days.7Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 USC 1871 – Fees Federal law does not require private employers to keep paying you during service, but many states do, sometimes capping the obligation at a certain number of days or requiring the employer to make up the difference between the court stipend and your normal daily rate.
For military service, the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act protects your civilian job but does not require your employer to pay you while you serve.8Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 38 USC 4301 – Purposes, Sense of Congress Some employers voluntarily provide differential pay to close the gap between military and civilian wages, especially for reservists and Guard members, but that is a matter of company policy. USERRA’s real force is reemployment: on return, your employer must restore you to the position you would have held if you had never left.
For voting, a majority of states require employers to allow time off, and many require that time to be paid, typically up to two hours when your schedule does not otherwise leave you time to vote. You usually have to give advance notice.
Taxes on Leave Benefits
Money you receive during leave is not always taxed the same way as your regular paycheck, and the treatment depends on who paid for the benefit.
- State paid family leave benefits for bonding or caring for a family member are generally treated as taxable income for federal purposes but are not subject to Social Security or Medicare withholding. The state will typically issue a Form 1099 if benefits exceed $600.
- For state paid medical leave, the portion of benefits tied to your own contributions is generally not taxable; the portion tied to your employer’s contributions is taxable as wages. For 2026, the IRS has extended a transition period for certain withholding and reporting requirements related to medical leave benefits, giving employers and states additional flexibility.9Internal Revenue Service. Notice 2026-06 – Extension of Transition Period for Certain Requirements in Revenue Ruling 2025-4
- If your employer paid the disability insurance premiums, your benefits are taxable income. If you paid the premiums with after-tax dollars, the benefits are tax-free. Premiums paid through a pre-tax cafeteria plan count as employer-paid for tax purposes.
- Workers’ compensation benefits are generally tax-free at both the federal and state level.
Getting this wrong can lead to an unexpected tax bill. If you receive disability or state leave benefits, check whether taxes are being withheld and consider making estimated payments if they are not.
What Happens to Your Health Insurance and Other Benefits
Pay is not the only cost question during leave. Your employer must maintain your group health insurance on the same terms during FMLA leave as if you were still working. If you normally pay a share of the premium, you still owe that share while on leave.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 USC 2614 – Employment and Benefits Protection If you are on unpaid leave and cannot make those payments, talk to your employer about a payment schedule before you fall behind.
There is also a lesser-known risk. If you do not return to work after your FMLA leave ends, your employer can recover the premiums it paid on your behalf during the leave.10eCFR. 29 CFR 825.213 – Employer Recovery of Benefit Costs That repayment obligation does not apply if you cannot return because of a continuing serious health condition or other circumstances beyond your control, but if you simply decide not to come back, the premiums for those months are a debt you owe.
Retirement benefits get their own treatment. Unpaid FMLA leave cannot be counted as a break in service for vesting and eligibility, so your years of service stay intact. But your employer does not have to credit the unpaid period toward benefit accrual, so contributions may pause for that stretch.11U.S. Department of Labor. Family and Medical Leave Act Advisor – Equivalent Position and Benefits