Sick leave for federal employees accrues at four hours every biweekly pay period, which comes to 13 days a year for full-time workers. There is no cap on how much you can bank, no reduction based on length of service, and any balance you carry into retirement converts into extra credited service on your annuity. The rules come from the Office of Personnel Management and apply governmentwide.
How Much You Earn
Full-time employees earn one half-day of sick leave each pay period. Across 26 pay periods, that adds up to 104 hours, or 13 eight-hour days, per year.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 5 USC 6307 – Sick Leave; Accrual and Accumulation The rate is fixed. Unlike annual leave, it doesn’t grow with years of service.
Part-time employees earn one hour of sick leave for every 20 hours in a pay status.2U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Fact Sheet: Sick Leave (General Information) A part-timer who works 40 hours in a pay period earns two hours of sick leave for that period.
Unused hours roll over from year to year with no ceiling.2U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Fact Sheet: Sick Leave (General Information) Employees who use little sick leave commonly build balances well over 1,000 hours across a career, and that banked time matters at retirement.
What You Can Use Sick Leave For
Personal use covers your own medical, dental, or optical exams and treatments, whether routine or urgent, and any period when illness, injury, pregnancy, or childbirth keeps you from doing your job.3U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Personal Sick Leave
You can also use sick leave when a health authority or your doctor determines that coming to work would risk spreading a serious communicable disease because of an exposure, even if you feel fine. OPM limits this to conditions where federal isolation and quarantine are authorized, such as infectious tuberculosis, smallpox, SARS, and pandemic influenza.2U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Fact Sheet: Sick Leave (General Information)
Adoption-related activities count too. That includes meetings with adoption agencies, social workers, and attorneys, court proceedings, required travel, and any time the agency or court orders you to take off to care for or bond with the child.4U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Handbook on Flexibilities for Childbirth, Adoption, and Foster Care
Family Care and Bereavement Limits
You can redirect part of your sick leave balance to care for a family member or attend to bereavement, but within annual caps. General family care and bereavement is limited to 104 hours (13 days) per leave year. This covers things like taking a family member to a doctor’s appointment, providing care during a minor illness, or attending a funeral.5U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Fact Sheet: Sick Leave for Family Care or Bereavement Purposes
When a family member has a serious health condition, the cap rises to 480 hours (12 weeks) per leave year.6U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Fact Sheet: Sick Leave to Care for a Family Member with a Serious Health Condition The two pools overlap rather than stack. If you already used some of the 104 hours earlier in the leave year, that amount comes off the 480-hour cap.7eCFR. 5 CFR 630.401 – Granting Sick Leave
These caps do not add hours to your account. They limit how much of your existing balance you can spend on family purposes in a single leave year.
Who Counts as Family
OPM defines family broadly. It includes spouse, parents, children, siblings, and in-laws, and also any individual related by blood or affinity whose close association with you is the equivalent of a family relationship.8U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Definitions Related to Family Member and Immediate Relative for Certain Leave Purposes A lifelong friend you consider family can qualify. No blood relationship or marriage certificate is required.
Requesting Sick Leave and Providing Documentation
Most agencies use OPM Form 71 or an electronic equivalent in their time and attendance system.9U.S. Office of Personnel Management. OPM Form 71 – Request for Leave or Approved Absence You enter the type of leave, the dates, and the hours; your supervisor reviews and approves; and the approved hours appear as a deduction on your Leave and Earnings Statement. For a known appointment, submit the request in advance. For unexpected illness, notify your supervisor as soon as practical and file the request when you return.
For any absence over three workdays, your agency can require a medical certificate from a healthcare provider.10eCFR. 5 CFR 630.405 – Supporting Evidence for the Use of Sick Leave Agencies can also require documentation for shorter absences when they find it necessary, which sometimes happens with patterns of sick calls on Mondays, Fridays, or around holidays. A formal “leave restriction” requiring a doctor’s note for every absence is uncommon but permitted under the same regulation.
Agencies can also accept your own self-certification as sufficient evidence for an absence, regardless of length. Whether self-certification is enough depends on your agency’s internal policies and any applicable collective bargaining agreement.3U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Personal Sick Leave
Advanced Sick Leave When Your Balance Is Zero
If you face a medical need and your balance is empty, your agency can advance you up to 240 hours (30 days) of sick leave you haven’t yet earned.2U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Fact Sheet: Sick Leave (General Information) It is discretionary, not an entitlement. The agency weighs whether the situation genuinely requires it and whether you are reasonably expected to return and earn the hours back.
An advance creates a debt. If you separate before earning the hours back, you must repay either through a refund of the salary paid during the advanced period or a charge against any other paid leave you have.11U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Fact Sheet: Advanced Sick Leave Agencies generally will not approve an advance for someone who has already applied for disability retirement or signaled they won’t return.
When You Exhaust Sick Leave
You still have options before going unpaid. You can request annual leave for medical purposes, though the supervisor can deny it, and you can request advanced annual leave up to what you would accrue for the rest of the leave year.
You can also apply for donated leave. Under the Voluntary Leave Transfer Program, coworkers donate their unused annual leave directly to you if you’re experiencing a medical emergency and meet the program’s eligibility rules.12U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Fact Sheet: Voluntary Leave Transfer Program Some agencies also run a Voluntary Leave Bank, a shared pool that members contribute to and draw from when they face a medical emergency. Unused donations from the bank return to the pool rather than to the original donor.13U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Voluntary Leave Bank Program You can participate in both programs at once when your agency offers both.
If every paid option is gone, you can request leave without pay. Supervisors are not required to grant it outside certain situations like FMLA-qualifying leave. Extended unpaid time can reduce your service credit for retirement and, past a certain length, affect your health insurance enrollment.
Sick Leave and FMLA
Federal employees are eligible for up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave per year under the Family and Medical Leave Act for qualifying events like childbirth, adoption, or a serious health condition affecting you or a family member. FMLA leave is unpaid by default, but you can substitute accrued sick leave (or annual leave) to stay in pay status. The two run concurrently, so using sick leave during FMLA doesn’t extend your protected time off; it just means you get paid for part or all of it.
FMLA also provides a statutory right to return to your position or an equivalent one, a layer of job protection beyond what sick leave alone offers.
If a Request Is Denied
If your supervisor denies a request you believe meets OPM’s criteria, your recourse is a grievance through your agency’s administrative procedures or, if you’re in a bargaining unit, through the negotiated grievance procedure in your collective bargaining agreement. OPM does not have enforcement authority over individual agency leave decisions.14U.S. Office of Personnel Management. What Are My Appeal Rights Under the Family and Medical Leave Act Your servicing personnel office or union representative can walk you through the specific steps.
What Happens to Unused Sick Leave at Retirement
A large balance pays off in a concrete way at the end of a career. When you retire on an immediate annuity, your unused sick leave converts into additional months of credited service for the retirement calculation. Every 174 hours becomes roughly one additional month of service credit.15U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Credit for Unused Sick Leave Under the Civil Service Retirement System An employee retiring with 2,087 hours banked, not unusual after 30 years, picks up a full extra year of service in the annuity computation.
This credit applies under both CSRS and FERS. FERS employees who retire on or after January 1, 2014, get full credit for their unused sick leave.
The credit affects only the length-of-service part of the formula. It does not change your high-3 average salary, which is calculated from the three consecutive years where your basic pay was highest and is entirely separate from your leave balance.16U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Computation The retirement boost comes through the service multiplier, not a pay bump.
Unused sick leave is never paid out as a lump sum when you leave federal service, whatever the circumstances. Lump-sum payments at separation apply only to unused annual leave.17U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Fact Sheet: Lump-Sum Payments for Annual Leave
If You Leave and Come Back
If you separate from federal employment and later return, your prior sick leave balance is recredited. Under the regulation, any employee who returns on or after December 2, 1994, gets the balance restored no matter how much time passed in between.18eCFR. 5 CFR 630.502 – Sick Leave Recredit You do not forfeit accumulated sick leave because of time spent in the private sector.
Recredit must be supported by documentation. That can be official personnel records from your former agency, copies of old Leave and Earnings Statements, or other written records your new agency finds acceptable. If a return to government is a possibility, keep your final earnings statements somewhere safe.