Paid Sick Days Don't Cause Unemployment

Abstract

Critics of legislation requiring employers to provide paid sick days frequently argue that these measures will lead to job loss and raise the national unemployment rate. However, this issue brief shows that the experience of 22 countries with the highest level of social and economic development (as measured by the Human Development Index) suggests that there is no statistically significant relationship between national unemployment rates and legally-mandated access to paid sick days and leave.