California Paid Sick Leave: Accrual, Use, and Payout

If you work in California, your employer must give you at least 40 hours — five days — of paid sick leave each year. California paid sick leave is guaranteed by the Healthy Workplaces, Healthy Families Act and applies to full-time, part-time, and temporary workers regardless of employer size or industry. Senate Bill 616, which took effect January 1, 2024, raised the state minimum from 24 hours to 40.

Who Qualifies

You qualify once you’ve worked for the same employer in California for at least 30 days within a year of your start date.¹ That threshold is low enough that most part-time and seasonal workers clear it within a couple of months. Accrual begins on your first day, but you can’t actually use banked hours until your 90th day on the job.²

A few groups fall outside the law: employees covered by a qualifying collective bargaining agreement, certain construction workers under a CBA, flight deck and cabin crew covered by the federal Railway Labor Act whose airline already provides equivalent compensated time off, retired public employees working without reinstatement into their retirement system, and railroad workers covered under federal law.³ If you aren’t in one of those categories, the law covers you.

How Much You Get and How You Earn It

Your employer picks one of two ways to provide the leave. Both must deliver at least 40 hours or five days per year.

Accrual

Under the standard accrual method, you earn one hour of sick leave for every 30 hours you work, starting on day one. Exempt salaried employees are assumed to work 40 hours a week unless their normal schedule is shorter. An employer can use a different accrual formula, but under any alternative schedule you must have at least 40 hours banked by your 200th calendar day of employment.¹

Your employer can cap your total accrued balance at 80 hours or ten days.⁴ That cap limits only how much you can bank. Your employer can separately limit how much you use in a year to 40 hours or five days, even if your balance is higher.¹ A big balance doesn’t automatically translate into permission to use it all in one year.

Front-Loading

Front-loading is simpler. Your employer grants the full 40 hours or five days at the start of each year, benefit year, or anniversary date. There’s no hourly tracking, and the employer doesn’t have to carry unused hours over, because the full amount resets each new period.¹

Minimum Increments

You choose how much to use at a time. Your employer can require a minimum increment, but that minimum can’t exceed two hours.¹ A policy that forces you to burn an entire eight-hour day for a one-hour appointment violates the law.

What You Can Use It For

Paid sick leave covers your own diagnosis, treatment, or preventive care, including annual physicals and vaccinations. It covers the same needs for a family member, defined broadly: children (biological, adopted, foster, stepchildren, or legal wards), parents, spouses, registered domestic partners, grandparents, grandchildren, and siblings.²

You can also designate one additional person per 12-month period. A “designated person” is whoever you identify at the time you request the leave. No advance paperwork is required, and the person doesn’t need to be related to you. Your employer can limit you to one designated person per 12-month period but can’t deny the designation itself.³

The law also protects time off for victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, or stalking. You can use sick leave to get a restraining order, find safe housing, receive counseling, or handle any related legal or safety need.²

How Your Sick Pay Is Calculated

If you’re nonexempt (hourly or non-salaried), your employer picks one of two methods. The first uses your regular rate of pay for the workweek in which you take the sick time, calculated the same way as overtime even if you didn’t work any overtime that week. The second divides your total wages (excluding overtime premiums) by your total hours worked over the prior 90 days.¹ Both are designed to keep your sick-day pay from falling below your normal earnings. For commission or piece-rate workers, the 90-day average typically applies.

For exempt salaried employees, sick time is paid the same way the employer pays other forms of leave.¹

Giving Notice and Doctor’s Notes

When you know about a medical need ahead of time, like a scheduled surgery or a prenatal visit, give reasonable advance notice. The law doesn’t fix a particular number of days. For sudden illness or emergencies, you give notice as soon as you’re able. Notice can be oral or written.

Your employer can’t require a doctor’s note for routine sick leave use, and they can’t deny your request because you didn’t give lead time for something you couldn’t foresee.⁴ If your company handbook demands a medical note for a single sick day, that policy conflicts with state law.

What Happens to Unused Leave When You Leave

Under accrual, unused sick leave carries over year to year, subject to the 80-hour cap.⁴ Under front-loading, you get a fresh 40 hours each period and your employer doesn’t have to carry anything over.¹

California does not require your employer to cash out unused sick leave when you quit or get fired. That surprises people. Vacation pay is treated as earned wages and must be paid at separation, but sick leave simply disappears when the job ends. If you return to the same employer within 12 months, however, your previously accrued balance must be restored and you can use it immediately.² One wrinkle: some employers combine sick leave and vacation into a single “paid time off” bank. When they do, the combined bank becomes subject to the payout-at-separation rule that applies to vacation.

What Your Paystub and Workplace Must Show

Every pay period, your employer must show your available sick leave balance either on your itemized wage statement or on a separate written notice provided with your paycheck. If the employer offers unlimited sick leave, the statement can simply say “unlimited.”¹ A current paid sick leave poster must also be displayed where employees can read it during the workday.⁴ And your employer has to keep records of hours worked and sick leave accrued and used for at least three years.²

If your paystub doesn’t show your sick leave balance, that alone is a violation.

Retaliation Protections and Penalties

Your employer cannot fire you, demote you, suspend you, cut your hours, or take any other punitive action because you used or tried to use paid sick leave. The same protection applies if you file a complaint with the Labor Commissioner or cooperate in an investigation. These anti-retaliation rules can’t be waived, even by a collective bargaining agreement that otherwise exempts the employer from the accrual provisions.⁴

If the Labor Commissioner finds a violation, penalties run on two tracks. For sick days unlawfully withheld, the penalty is three times the dollar value of the withheld pay or $250, whichever is greater, capped at $4,000. For other harm, such as a termination, the penalty is $50 for each day the violation continued, also capped at $4,000. The Commissioner can order reinstatement, back pay, and restoration of withheld sick days.⁵

Local Ordinances That May Give You More

The state law is a floor, not a ceiling. Several cities, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Oakland, Berkeley, Emeryville, San Diego, and Santa Monica, have their own sick leave ordinances that require more than the state minimum. Where a local rule provides more leave, faster accrual, or broader covered uses, your employer must follow whichever rule is most beneficial to you.

Two areas go the other way: as of January 1, 2024, local ordinances cannot impose different requirements for paystub disclosures or for how sick leave pay is calculated. On those two points, state law controls.⁴ If you work in a city with its own ordinance, check both sets of rules, because total hours, accrual caps, and covered family members can differ in ways that affect you directly.

1
California Legislative Information. Senate Bill 616 – Sick Days: Paid Sick Days Accrual and Use
2
Department of Industrial Relations. Healthy Workplace Healthy Family Act of 2014 (AB 1522)
3
California Legislative Information. California Code Labor Code 245.5
4
Department of Industrial Relations. California Paid Sick Leave: Frequently Asked Questions
5
California Legislative Information. California Code Labor Code 248.5 – Paid Sick Days