Michigan Paid Time Off Laws: Accrual, Usage, and Carryover

Michigan’s paid sick time law, the Earned Sick Time Act, requires nearly every employer in the state to provide paid sick leave. Workers earn one hour of paid sick time for every 30 hours on the job. Employees at businesses with more than 10 workers can use up to 72 hours per year, and those at small businesses can use up to 40 hours. The law took effect February 21, 2025, replacing the narrower Paid Medical Leave Act that had been on the books since 2019.¹

Who Is Covered

Coverage is close to universal. The act defines “employer” as any person, firm, business, educational institution, corporation, limited liability company, or government entity with at least one employee. The only employer flat-out excluded is the United States government.²

Size still matters for one thing: how much sick time you can actually use in a year. A “small business” is an employer with 10 or fewer workers on payroll during a given week. Once an employer has more than 10 employees on payroll for 20 or more calendar workweeks in the current or preceding year, it stops qualifying as a small business.² Small businesses had until October 1, 2025 to comply.¹

The list of workers who don’t qualify is short:

Federal government employees.
Workers whose employer policy lets them set their own hours and bars the employer from penalizing them for not scheduling a minimum number of hours.
Unpaid trainees and interns.
Individuals employed under Michigan’s Youth Employment Standards Act.

If you were shut out of the old Paid Medical Leave Act as a part-timer, seasonal worker, out-of-state employee, or salaried FLSA-exempt employee, those exclusions are gone. You are almost certainly covered now.²

How Much Sick Time You Earn

Every covered employee accrues one hour of paid sick time for every 30 hours worked. The accrual rate is the same at small businesses and larger ones.³ The old Paid Medical Leave Act used one hour per 35 hours, so anyone still working from that figure is undercounting.

What differs by employer size is how much of that accrued time you can actually use in a year:

Employers with more than 10 workers: up to 72 hours of paid sick time per year.
Small businesses (10 or fewer workers): up to 40 hours per year.

Both figures are floors. An employer is free to offer more.³

Accrual starts on your first day. Your employer can, however, make new hires wait up to 120 calendar days before drawing on the balance. The hours still bank during that wait; you just cannot use them yet.³

What You Get Paid

Sick time is paid at the greater of your normal hourly wage or the state minimum wage. If your hourly rate varies with the work you perform, “normal hourly wage” means your average hourly rate from the pay period immediately before the one in which you use sick time.⁴

Taking It in Small Chunks

You don’t have to burn a full hour at a time. An employer can allow one-hour increments or use whatever smallest increment it already uses to track absences and other time off.⁵

What You Can Use Sick Time For

The law lists five qualifying reasons, and an employer must let you use accrued hours for any of them:

Your own mental or physical illness, injury, or health condition, including diagnosis, treatment, and preventive care.
The same kinds of health needs for a family member. The definition of family is broad: children (biological, adopted, or foster), parents, spouses, siblings, grandparents, grandchildren, and domestic partners, among others.
Domestic violence or sexual assault affecting you or a family member. Covered activities include medical care, counseling, services from a victim organization, relocation, legal services, and court proceedings.
Meetings at a child’s school or place of care about the child’s health, disability, or the effects of domestic violence or sexual assault.
Public health emergencies, including a public official closing your workplace, a school or care facility closing, or a health authority determining that your presence (or a family member’s) in the community would endanger others due to communicable disease exposure.

⁶

Notice and Documentation

If the leave is foreseeable, your employer can require up to seven days’ notice before it starts. When the need is unforeseeable, you must give notice as soon as practicable.⁶

Documentation can be required only when you’re out for more than three consecutive days. A note from a health care professional confirming that sick time was needed counts as reasonable documentation. For absences tied to domestic violence or sexual assault, you choose the form: a police report, a signed statement from a victim advocate, or a court document. Your employer cannot demand details about the nature of your illness or the specifics of any violence.⁶

One rule catches employers off guard. If your employer requires documentation, it must pay any out-of-pocket cost you incur to get it. When you have health insurance, the employer covers any provider charge for producing the specific documentation requested. And your employer cannot delay the start of your leave while it waits for paperwork.⁶

Protection From Retaliation

Your employer cannot interfere with, restrain, or deny any right under the act. That means no firing, suspending, demoting, cutting hours, or otherwise punishing you for using sick time, filing a complaint, cooperating with a state investigation, or telling a coworker about their rights.⁷

Attendance policies that count protected sick time against you violate the law. If your workplace uses a points-based absence-control system, earned sick time taken under the act cannot be treated as an absence that leads to discipline.⁷

An employer found to have retaliated faces a civil fine of up to $1,000 per violation, on top of any other civil remedies available to you. A good-faith complaint about a violation is protected even if the complaint turns out to be mistaken.⁷

Carryover, Front-Loading, and Payout at Separation

Unused accrued time carries over from year to year. The carryover cap tracks the annual usage cap: up to 72 hours at larger employers and 40 hours at small businesses. Even with a carryover balance, an employer does not have to let you use more than the annual cap in any single year.³

Many employers prefer to front-load the full allotment at the start of the year rather than track accrual hour by hour. An employer that front-loads at least 72 hours (or 40 for a small business) has no obligation to allow carryover, no need to track ongoing accrual, and no requirement to pay out unused time at year-end.³

Either way, the law does not require your employer to cash out your unused sick time when you leave. You are not entitled to a payout on resignation or termination unless a separate employment contract or collective bargaining agreement says so.³

Longer Absences and the FMLA

The Earned Sick Time Act is a separate entitlement from federal Family and Medical Leave Act leave, but the two can overlap. FMLA rules let either the employee or the employer require accrued paid leave to run concurrently with unpaid FMLA leave, in which case the time counts against both balances at once.⁸ FMLA applies only to private-sector employers with 50 or more employees within a 75-mile radius, and only to employees who have worked at least 12 months and 1,250 hours.⁹ While you are on FMLA leave, your employer must maintain your group health insurance on the same terms as if you were still working.¹⁰ The Michigan sick time law has no equivalent health-insurance-maintenance rule, so for a longer absence at a larger employer, the FMLA layer is where that protection comes from.

1
State of Michigan. Earned Sick Time Act – Effective Feb. 21, 2025
2
Michigan Legislature. MCL 408.962 – Definitions
3
Michigan Legislature. MCL 408.963 – Earned Sick Time Act
4
Michigan Legislature. MCL 408.963 – Amended
5
State of Michigan. Earned Sick Time Act – Frequently Asked Questions
6
Michigan Legislature. MCL 408.964 – Amended
7
Michigan Legislature. HB 4002 – Enrolled
8
U.S. Department of Labor. FMLA Frequently Asked Questions
9
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet #28 – The Family and Medical Leave Act
10
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet – Employee Protections Under the Family and Medical Leave Act