How Much Sick Leave Per Year? Accrual, Carryover, and State Laws

Most U.S. workers get between 5 and 9 paid sick days per year, and how much sick leave per year you actually receive depends on your employer’s policy, the state or city you work in, and whether any federal rule applies to your job. About 80 percent of private-industry workers had access to paid sick leave as of 2025, and among those with a fixed plan, the average was roughly 8 days after one year of service.¹² There is no federal law requiring private employers to give paid sick days, so the specific number comes from your workplace and where you live.

What Federal Law Guarantees

For most private-sector employees, federal law does not require any paid sick leave at all. What it does provide is job protection during unpaid medical absences through the Family and Medical Leave Act.

The FMLA entitles eligible employees to up to 12 workweeks of unpaid leave during any 12-month period for a serious personal health condition, the birth or adoption of a child, or the care of a spouse, child, or parent with a serious health condition.³ A separate provision extends this to 26 workweeks in a single 12-month period for employees caring for a covered servicemember with a serious injury or illness.⁴

To qualify, you need at least 12 months of employment with your current employer, at least 1,250 hours of actual work during the 12 months before your leave starts, and your workplace must have at least 50 employees within a 75-mile radius.⁵ Many workers at small businesses, new hires, and part-time employees fall outside the law’s reach.

Because FMLA leave is unpaid, your employer can require you to use accrued paid sick days, vacation, or other paid time off during it. You can also choose to draw down that paid balance yourself. Either way, the leave remains FMLA-protected while the paid balance runs.⁶

Paid Sick Days for Federal Contractors and Federal Employees

Two groups of workers do get a specific paid amount set by federal rule.

Federal Contractors

Executive Order 13706 requires businesses holding certain federal contracts to provide paid sick leave to employees working on or in connection with those contracts. Covered workers earn one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours worked, up to 56 hours per year. Employers cannot set the annual cap any lower than 56 hours.⁷

Federal Employees

If you work directly for the federal government, your sick leave accrues at 4 hours per biweekly pay period, which works out to 13 days (104 hours) per year for full-time employees. Part-time federal employees earn 1 hour of sick leave for every 20 hours in pay status. There is no cap on how much federal sick leave you can accumulate over the course of your career.⁸

State and Local Sick Leave Laws

Roughly 20 states and the District of Columbia require private employers to provide paid sick leave. Many cities and counties have their own ordinances, sometimes with higher requirements than the state law. If you work in a jurisdiction with a mandate, your employer must follow it regardless of what its internal policy says.

The details vary, but several patterns appear across most of these laws:

Accrual rate of one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours worked, matching the federal contractor formula.
Annual use caps of somewhere between 40 and 56 hours (about 5 to 7 days), with larger employers often required to provide the higher amount.
Small business exceptions in some jurisdictions, allowing businesses with fewer than five employees to provide unpaid rather than paid leave, particularly when the business has a low net income.
Employer size tiers, so a business with 100 or more workers may owe 56 hours per year while one with 5 to 99 workers may owe 40 hours.

If no state or local law covers your workplace, your sick leave depends entirely on your employer’s own policy. Check your employee handbook or ask human resources how many days you receive.

How Your Yearly Total Actually Builds Up

The number of days on paper is not always the number you have available at any given moment. Employers that provide sick leave generally use one of two systems.

Accrual

Under the accrual method, you earn sick time gradually based on hours worked. At the common rate of one hour for every 30 worked, a full-time employee putting in 40 hours a week accumulates roughly 1.33 hours of sick leave each week. Over a full 52-week year that adds up to approximately 69 hours before caps. Most employers cap the usable annual total at 40, 48, or 56 hours depending on the applicable law or company policy. Accrual typically begins on your first day, even if you cannot use the balance until a waiting period passes.

Front-Loading

Front-loading gives you the entire annual allotment at once, usually at the start of the calendar year, your hire anniversary, or another designated date. If your employer front-loads 40 or 56 hours, you have immediate access to the full balance without waiting for it to build up. Most jurisdictions that mandate paid sick leave allow this as an alternative to accrual. The trade-off is that when an employer front-loads the full annual amount, many jurisdictions do not require the unused balance to carry over, since a fresh allotment arrives at the start of each new period.

Carryover From Year to Year

Unused hours behave differently depending on the method your employer uses and the local law. Under the accrual method, most state mandates require unused hours to roll over into the following year, though employers can cap the total banked balance. Carryover caps typically range from 40 to 80 hours depending on the jurisdiction and employer size. Even when hours carry over, employers can still limit how many you actually use in a single year, so carrying a balance of 80 hours does not necessarily mean you can use all 80 within one year.

Federal employees have no carryover cap. Unused sick leave carries forward indefinitely, so long-tenured workers can accumulate hundreds of hours over a career.⁸

Most jurisdictions do not require employers to pay out unused sick leave when you leave a job. Sick leave balances are generally treated differently from vacation time in this respect. If you are rehired by the same employer within 12 months, many state laws require the employer to reinstate whatever accrued balance you had at separation.

Waiting Periods Before You Can Use It

Even where sick leave is legally required, you typically need to satisfy a waiting period before you can draw on it. A common standard across both employer policies and state mandates is up to 90 calendar days. During that window your balance accrues on paper, but you cannot use any of it until the waiting period ends. After the 90-day mark, your full accrued balance becomes available. Some jurisdictions allow shorter waiting periods, and a few require employers to let you use sick leave as soon as it accrues.

Employment classification affects the pace of accrual, but not usually eligibility. Since accrual is tied to hours worked, a part-time employee working 20 hours a week earns sick leave at half the rate of a full-time counterpart. Most state mandates cover part-time and temporary workers; the annual total is simply smaller because fewer hours are worked.

What Sick Leave Covers

Sick leave is not limited to your own illness. Most laws and employer policies let you use it for personal illness or injury, preventive care such as routine medical, dental, and optical appointments, care for a sick family member, absences related to communicable disease when a health authority or provider says your presence at work would put others at risk, and safe leave connected to domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking, or human trafficking.⁹⁷

Under the FMLA, family caregiving leave applies only to a spouse, child, or parent, and does not cover parents-in-law.⁴ State paid sick leave laws often define family more broadly, extending to siblings, grandparents, grandchildren, or domestic partners. The exact list of qualifying reasons varies by jurisdiction, so review your local law or handbook to confirm what applies.

If You Run Out of Sick Leave

If you use up your paid sick balance but still need time away, you may have other options. You might be able to use accrued vacation or general paid time off. If your condition qualifies as a serious health condition and you meet the eligibility rules, you may still be entitled to unpaid, job-protected FMLA leave for up to 12 workweeks.³

Some states have separate short-term disability insurance programs or paid family and medical leave programs that provide partial wage replacement during extended medical absences. Employer-sponsored short-term disability insurance is another possibility. If none of these apply, an extended absence without leave protection means your employer may not be required to hold your job, so it is worth mapping out your options before the balance is gone.

1
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Paid Sick Leave Was Available to 80 Percent of Private Industry Workers in 2025
2
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Paid Sick Leave: What Is Available to Workers?
3
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 USC Ch. 28: Family and Medical Leave
4
U.S. Department of Labor. Family and Medical Leave Act
5
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 28H: 12-Month Period Under the Family and Medical Leave Act
6
U.S. Department of Labor. FMLA Frequently Asked Questions
7
Federal Register. Establishing Paid Sick Leave for Federal Contractors
8
U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Fact Sheet: Sick Leave General Information
9
U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Personal Sick Leave