Helping Middle-class Families Get Ahead by Expanding Paid Sick Leave

Seven out of ten mothers who are essential workers or working from home report that it is difficult to balance work and family unit, according to new work from our colleagues in the Hamilton Project. Co-ordinate to the same study, parents of young children and Blackness and Hispanic mothers with young children were more likely to drop out of the labor strength or be unemployed considering of the pandemic.

The Future of the Middle Form Initiative'south own research from the American Center Class Hopes and Anxieties Study explores this time squeeze in item. In a serial of focus groups effectually the country, the squad, led by Jennifer Silva, Tiffany Ford, and Isabel Sawhill, heard middle-class Americans say that they struggled to residual their schedules and time spent with family. Pre-COVID-nineteen, some participants even expressed concerns about the sustainability of their lifestyles. The common refrain "What if something happens?" foreshadowed the economic turmoil acquired by COVID-19.

So, what could be done to lessen the time clasp? Isabel Sawhill and Richard Reeves have suggested a range of approaches, from a reduction in the standard work week to mid-career sabbaticals to subsidized childcare. One thing that the pandemic has taught Americans is the importance of guaranteed paid leave: to take care of family members, to recover from illness, or even to get vaccinated.

In fact, the American Rescue Plan Act restarted and expanded several paid leave policies related to COVID-19. It restarted Emergency Paid Sick Get out (EPSL) hours, giving employees who had wearied the previous allotment more fourth dimension off, and information technology expanded the reasons for EPSL and Expanded Family unit and Medical Go out (EFML). While these steps will undoubtedly help workers navigate time off during the pandemic, they notwithstanding do not match the guaranteed paid get out in many other countries.

All work and no play (or paid sick exit)

As Reeves and Sawhill write in A New Contract with the Middle Course , Americans are working more than adults in other advanced countries, ofttimes face unpredictable work schedules, must cope with school hours that are desperately aligned with working hours, and get trivial aid with caring for children or the elderly. Half of all American adults say they do not have enough time to do what they desire with their days.

The U.S. now stands out among similar nations in terms of working hours. The average American worker now spends 200 to 400 more hours at work over the course of the year than the average worker in well-nigh European countries – the equivalent of an extra iv to 8 hours per week :

For the full choice of charts and figures, meet A New Contract with the Eye Class.

Why do Americans work so many more than hours each year than Europeans? Most of the gap results from differences in the number of weeks worked per year, rather than the length of the work week. This in turn reflects differences in legal rights to leave and holidays. The fact that the U.S. has no mandated leave at all (beyond some holidays) is the primary source of the gap; Germany provides twice every bit much time off as the U.Due south.:

Policy matters, which is why in the Contract, to help eye-grade Americans take more time, and to ease the time squeeze, Reeves and Sawhill suggest a legal right to a minimum of 20 days leave each twelvemonth. More details follow, but first, it's important to empathize who currently has access to paid go out in the U.S.

Who currently has admission to paid exit?

In their "Primer on admission to and use of paid family leave" Isabel Sawhill, Sarah Nzau, and Katherine Guyot point to i of the about cited estimates on workers' access to paid leave, that only nineteen% of U.Due south. employees have admission to paid family leave through an employer. Some critics argue that this number is also low, since surveys of employees propose around half tin can take paid time off for family reasons, fifty-fifty in the absence of a formal benefit plan. To explore this contradiction, they consider three surveys that provided new data on access to and use of paid leave in 2019, the National Compensation Survey, the American Time Use Survey, and the American Family Survey. They discover that low-wage workers are less likely to have access to paid get out and tend to take unpaid go out at higher rates than other groups, though they have less leave overall:

While some of the provisions in the American Rescue Plan and previous COVID-19 relief bills help low-wage workers, the plans were not enacted as permanent solutions for the time clasp.

A path forwards: Twenty days of paid get out

Sawhill and Reeves suggest that one way to reduce working time is to require all employers to provide a certain amount of paid personal time off for all employees. The U.S., as we accept seen, is the only advanced country that does non do this. The reasons for taking leave vary enormously – for illness, vacation, the nativity of a infant, to treat an elder. They therefore advise in the Contract a broad rather than chiselled entitlement, to 20 days per twelvemonth of paid leave. This is less than many other countries but would at least establish a minimum floor. Some employers already provide this much paid leave in one form or some other. But many do not – peculiarly for their depression-wage workers. Concluding September, Sawhill and Reeves concluded the chapter on time use with this statement: "In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the need for such leave should exist obvious. Part of the new contract with the middle class should exist: if you are sick, y'all must stay abode. Merely we will pay you lot to do and then." As leap dawns, and promise blooms in the course of increased vaccination rates, lower unemployment rates, and increased spending, paid leave must be kept at the forefront of the policy conversation.

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Source: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2021/05/19/guarantee-20-days-of-paid-leave/

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