Paid Sick Leave

The one-sentence answer

California law requires every employer — including a family employing a single caregiver — to provide paid sick leave, and for Self-Determination Program participants it is one of the six costs that make up employer burden.

What this means for you

There is no small-employer exemption. None. California's paid sick leave law applies to all employers regardless of size. If you employ one person through Co-Employer or Sole Employer, you owe paid sick leave. This surprises families more than any other employment obligation, because the instinct is that rules like this start at some number of employees. This one starts at one.

What you owe, in practice:

Minimum per year	5 days or 40 hours, whichever is more generous
How it builds up	At least 1 hour for every 30 hours worked
Who qualifies	Anyone who works 30+ days for you within a year in California
When they can use it	After 90 days of employment
You may cap yearly use at	40 hours / 5 days
You may cap total accrual at	80 hours / 10 days
Unused leave	Carries over to the next year, up to that cap

It is already in your budget — and you are paying for it whether or not it is used. Paid sick leave is one of the six components DDS lists as employer burden, so it is built into the burden percentage applied to your workers' wages and paid from your spending plan. You are not asked to find this money separately.

What it means for your planning is the part worth thinking about. If your caregiver takes a sick day, you are paying for a day of care you did not receive — and if you need cover, you pay twice. That is not a loophole, it is how employing someone works, but it argues for a plan with a little slack in it rather than one budgeted to the last hour. See the spending plan entry.

An alternative to accrual: instead of tracking 1 hour per 30, you may "frontload" the full 40 hours at the start of each year. Many small employers find this simpler. If you do use an accrual method other than 1-per-30, the law requires your employee to have at least 24 hours by their 120th day and 40 hours by their 200th day.

For the detail-oriented

The governing source is the California Department of Industrial Relations, Division of Labor Standards Enforcement: https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/paid_sick_leave.htm.

The current minimum of 5 days or 40 hours took effect 1 January 2024 under SB 616, which raised it from the previous 3 days / 24 hours. If you are working from guidance written before 2024 — and a fair amount of material online still is — you will see the older figure. Check the date on anything you read about this.

DDS confirms paid sick leave as a burden component in Self-Determination Program: Employer Burden and Other Employment-Related Costs (25 April 2024), which lists the costs an FMS may include and states they "are limited to" six items: FICA, FUTA, SUTA, Employment Training Tax, workers' compensation insurance, and paid sick leave. See employer burden for the full list and what it excludes.

Some California cities require more. Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Oakland, Santa Monica, Berkeley and Emeryville among others have their own paid sick leave ordinances, and where a local ordinance is more generous than state law, the local rule governs. This entry states the state minimum only. If you employ someone in a city with its own ordinance, check that ordinance — we have not surveyed them and will not guess at their terms.

Paid sick leave is not PTO, and the two are not interchangeable. A combined PTO policy can satisfy the sick leave requirement, but only if it meets or beats every element above. See the PTO entry.

This entry describes California law as it applies to employers generally. It is information, not legal advice. For a specific situation — particularly one involving termination, a dispute, or a local ordinance — talk to an employment attorney.