Paid sick days reduce costly spending on emergency health care services. If all workers had paid sick days in the United States, health care costs associated with emergency room use would be reduced by $1.1 billion each year, with $517 million in savings going to taxpayer-funded health insurance programs.
If workers were offered seven paid sick days a year, our national economy would experience a net savings of $160 billion a year in 2002 dollars, or $228 billion in 2019 dollars after adjusting for inflation, due to increased productivity and reduced turnover.
Paid sick days help family caregivers manage both their caregiving responsibilities and the jobs they need to support their families. Forty-three million adults in the United States are unpaid caregivers for family members — and six in 10 report working at jobs unrelated to their care responsibilities.
The U.S. Public Strongly Supports Paid Sick Days
Public demand and legislative victories have inspired employers and lawmakers to better understand and adopt paid sick days policies. An estimated 46 million private sector workers are now covered by paid sick days laws. And since 2015, the period in which most paid sick days laws have taken effect, national access to paid sick days has increased by 12 percentage points.