Labor market effects of US sick pay mandates [State-Level Analysis] (Pichler & Ziebarth, 2020)

The United States does not provide universal access to paid sick leave; however, some U.S. states have sick leave mandates. The authors studied sick leave mandates in four states (Connecticut, California, Massachusetts, and Oregon). The dates the laws went into effect ranged from 2012 to 2016, and the details of each law varied. All sick leave pay mandates were employer mandates, with criteria for sick pay dependent on the overall number of employees, number of full-time employees, number of days worked to accrue leave, and type of job sector. Each mandate provided sick time for personal use or for a sick family member. Employees earned one hour of paid sick leave per 30-40 hours worked. Most mandates require a 90-day working period to accrue the sick pay benefit. The mandate in Connecticut applied only to private firms with more than 49 employees in the service sector. The mandates in Massachusetts and Oregon only applied to private firms with more than nine employees. 

The authors used a difference-in-differences design to examine how employment and wages changed in states with and without sick pay mandates. The treatment groups were the states with sick pay mandates. The authors created comparison groups for each state comprised of states with identical pre-sick pay mandate outcomes, similar labor markets, and similar population structures. The authors obtained private sector employment and wage data from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The data included all jobs covered by Unemployment Insurance and included the number of jobs filled each month and average weekly wages by quarter. The authors used statistical models to compare the outcomes between the groups 48 months before and 36 months after the law went into effect.