Hello, my name is Jacob Klerman.
On behalf of the Abt 2018 FMLA Surveys Team, which also included Radha Roy, Jane Herr and
Scott Brown, it's my pleasure today to talk to you about the results with respect to leave
taking.
This presentation was prepared for the Department of Labor's Chief Evaluation Office under contract
to Abt Associates.
The standard disclaimer applies.
That is, the views expressed here are those of the authors and should not be attributed
to the Department of Labor.
All the reports and other project deliverables for this project can be found at the URL at
the bottom of the screen.
This talk has a relatively standard structure.
I'm going to start by giving some background, and I'm going to go to the core of the talk
and talk about findings on leaving taking and I'll conclude with where you can go for
more information.
Okay, let's do background.
The family medical leave act of 1993 -- what we call FMLA -- which was public law 103-3,guarantees
to eligible employees, at covered employers, with a qualifying condition, twelve weeks
of job protected but unpaid leave.
There have been four sets of surveys to understand the outcomes with respect to the FMLA.
1995, 2000, 2012, and 2018.
All but the first survey actually included two surveys.
A survey of employees and a survey of work sites.
And like wave three, wave four which I'm going to discuss today, was funded by the Department
of Labor Chief Evaluation Office, and was fielded by Abt
Associates.
Now, we're ready to talk about the findings on leave taking.
So, the chart on the left gives the rates of leave taking estimated across the four
waves, 1995, 2000, 2012 and 2018.
And while it looks like there was a small uptick in leave taking from 2012 to 2018 that
difference is not statistically significant.
The two rates are within the margin of error.
So we conclude that leave taking rates remain stable.
That was our first finding.
Our second finding concerns how those rates of leave taking vary across characteristics
of employees.
So the box in the upper left gives the overall rate of leave taking.
Fifteen percent of employees take leave in a given year.
And then the other three boxes show how those rates vary for subgroups.
So, in the upper right you can see that single parents are more likely to take leave than
dual parents.
And the two stars above household indicates that that result is quite statistically significant.
We're relatively certain that that is not due to chance.
The lower left quadrant shows that those caring for a child are more likely to take leave
than those caring for an adult sixty five or over.
And the lower right quadrant says the rates do vary by education.
Those with the less than a high school education are the most likely to take leave.
Those with a bachelor degree or higher are the least likely to take leave.
We also look for differences by sex, ethnicity, and race and found no such differences.
That's our second finding.
Our third finding concerns reason for and length of leave.
The reasons for leave are pretty widely spread.
About half of leave -- fifty one percent, are for own illness, about a quarter of leave
are for a new child and fourteen percent, are for some other adults' illness with the
rest spread round a variety of other outcomes.
And within these three types of reasons for taking leave there is wide variation in how
long the leave actually lasts.
Leaves are longest for a new child, on average, thirty six days.
Leaves are shortest for another adult's illness, on average, nineteen days.
And leaves for own illness are somewhere in between at twenty nine days.
We also looked at intermittent leave.
Intermittent leave is defined as multiple incidents of leave for a single reason in
a year.
So if one needed to take leave every Friday afternoon for chemotherapy for a month, we
will consider that to be a single leave with multiple incidents.
And we would define that as intermittent leave.
Overall, we've found that about a third, thirty one percent of leaves, were actually for intermittent
leave.
Furthermore, among those who take any intermittent leave, they are on average taking lots of
leave.
On average about six leave incidents.
Furthermore the reasons for taking intermittent leave differ slightly for the overall reasons
for leave in general.
For those taking intermittent leave, intermittent leave is more common for a covered family
member and less common for new child.
This chart considers the availaiblity of paid leave to employees.
The FMLA does not provide paid leave so the leave reported here is not related to the
federal FMLA.
Generally you can see in the upper left quadrant that about seventy three percent of all employees
have some form of paid leave available to them for their own illness, or for medical
care.
About 58%, slightly less, have some form of paid leave available to them for illness or
medical care of a family member.
For this type leave might include own sick leave.
It might include own vacation, or might include paid time off, a generic category that some
employers use.
If you look in the upper right you can see these availablity of paid leave vary sharply.
By those were eligible and ineligible for the FMLA
Those were eligible for the FMLA are also more likely to have availability of paid leave
for themselves, 83 percent for those who are eligible versus sixty two percent that are
not.
And also more likely to have paid leave available for the illness or medical care of a family
member,
Sixty nine percent among those were eligible for FMLA, forty six percent among those were
not.
And again, remember that the federal FMLA statute does not provide pay.
So this is not caused by the FMLA.
This is that people were eligible are different than those who are not eligible.
If you look in the lower left, you can see that there is no difference in availability
of paid leave either for own illness or illness of a family member by whether you're in a
paid leave state or a non-paid leave state.
Finally in the lower right, you see that those who are non-low-wage workers are much more
likely to have paid leave available to them.
Eighty percent of non-low-wage workers, those with hourly earnings of 15 dollars or higher,
have access to some form of paid leave for their own illness.
Only fifty-two percent of low-wage workers have access to such leave.
Similarly, sixty five percent of non-low-wage workers have access to paid leave for the
illness or medical care of a family member.
But only thirty nine percent of low-wage workers have access to paid leave.
Pay actually received on leave varies with leave length.
Overall slightly less than half, 42% of individuals taking leave, get full pay.
On the other side, slightly more than a third, thirty four percent, receive no pay.
In the middle, thirteen percent received partial pay more than half but less than all.
And eleven percent received partial pay but less than half.
That's the rate overall for all leaves, but if we look at how that varies by the length
of leave we can see stark differences.
The shortest leaves are most likely to be totally paid: sixty six percent.
The longest leaves are least likely to be paid: twenty two percent.
Pay while on leave also varies by sub-group.
Here in the upper left quadrant group pay into full pay: forty two percent get full
pay.
Twenty four percent get partial pay and thirty four percent get no pay.
You can see in the upper right that this again varies by elibility for the FMLA.
Those who are eligible for the FMLA are more likely to get full pay: fifty one percent
compared to thirty five percent for those who are not eligible for the FMLA.
And conversely, those who are ineligible for the FMLA are more likely to get no pay: forty
six percent.
Versus twenty percent of those who are eligible.
Again, this cannot literally be caused by the FMLA because there is no pay provided
by the federal FMLA.
If you look in the lower left, there is a little bit of evidence that individuals in
paid leave states are slightly less likely to get no pay: twenty one percent.
Versus those in a non-paid leave state where that rate is thirty six percent.
And then finally we see strong differences for low-wage versus non-low-wage workers
Low-wage workers are much less likely to get full-pay: twenty-two percent versus fifty
three percent among non-low-wage workers.
And low-wage workers are much more likely to get no pay, sixty one percent compared
to twenty percent among non-low-wage workers.
That's the end of our discussion on the findings on leave taking.
I want to conclude with some pointers about where you can get more information.
On the left of this chart we show that there are a group of summary documents.
There is an executive summary to the report.
There are three briefs: "Who is Eligible?", "Employee Leave-Taking Patterns", and "Paid
Leave".
And there is another short presentation like this one on Worksite Experiences.
Then there are a set of detailed documents.
The main report from the effort is called "Results from the 2018 Surveys".
There is a main volume and an appendix volume.
There is also a "Methodology Report for the 2018 Surveys" again, a main volume and an
appendix volume.
And there are two short papers: "Comparison of Leave Taking Experiences by Gender" and
"Leave Experiences of Low-Wage Workers"
All of these results are available on the Department of Labor Chief Evaluation Office's
Website whose URL is at the bottom of this slide.
Finally if you have more questions you can contact Radha Roy who is the Project Director
for the study Or Kuang-chi Chang who is the Project Officer for the study at the Department
of Labor.
Again all of the project deliverables and reports are available at the URL on this slide.
Thank you very much.