Economy in Numbers
Access to Paid Sick Days
Vastly Unequal
This article is from the September/October 2007 issue of Dollars & Sense: The Magazine of Economic Justice available at http://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2007/0907gould.html
This article is from the September/October 2007 issue of Dollars & Sense magazine.
Subscribe Now
at a 30% discount.
This article is from the Spring 2007 issue of Dollars & Sense: The Magazine of Economic Justice available at http://www.dollarsandsense.org
Just 57% of private-industry workers in the United States have access to paid sick leave; 43% have no paid sick days. When these workers get sick, they are forced either to stay home, without pay and, in many cases, with some risk of losing their job, or else to go to work.
What this number masks, however, is how vastly unequal access to paid sick leave is for workers at different wage levels. Workers at the bottom of the wage scale, those making less than $7.38 an hour, are five times less likely to have sick days than workers at the top of the scale, those making greater than $29.47 an hour. As the figure reveals, only 16% of low-wage workers have access to paid sick days, versus 79% of high-wage workers.
In recent months, legislation has been introduced that would level the playing field and provide much needed paid leave for all workers who are sick. Such legislation—as exists in other advanced economies—would not only give workers an important benefit. Universal paid sick leave could increase productivity by strengthening worker loyalty, decreasing turnover, and cutting down on the number of sick employees who show up to work and infect others.
29 Winter Street, Boston, MA 02108 USA