California Senate Bill 616: Accrual, Carryover, and Usage

Under California’s paid sick leave law, most employees earn at least 40 hours (five days) of paid sick leave each year, can bank up to 80 hours, and can start using their time on the 90th day of employment. Those figures took effect January 1, 2024, when SB 616 amended Labor Code Section 246 and raised the previous minimums of 24 hours of annual leave and a 48-hour accrual cap.

Who Qualifies

You’re covered if you work for the same California employer for 30 or more days within a year of your start date. Full-time, part-time, and temporary workers all count. Accrual begins on day one, but you can’t use any of the time until you’ve been employed for 90 days.¹

Salaried employees who are exempt from overtime are treated as working a 40-hour week for accrual purposes, or their normal schedule if it’s shorter.²

A few categories fall outside the law entirely: flight deck and cabin crew who already receive equivalent compensated time off, retired government annuitants, railroad employees covered by federal railroad labor rules, and construction workers under a qualifying collective bargaining agreement. Workers under other CBAs are partially exempt if the agreement provides paid sick days, premium overtime rates, and a regular hourly rate at least 30 percent above the state minimum wage. If your CBA doesn’t hit those thresholds, the full law applies to you.³

How Much You Get

The annual minimum is 40 hours or five days, whichever is greater for your schedule. That phrasing matters if your shifts run longer than eight hours. Someone working 10-hour shifts is entitled to five days, which equals 50 hours, not 40. A “day” is measured by your actual scheduled shift.⁴

Your employer can cap how much you actually use in a year at that same 40 hours or five days, even if you’ve banked more.¹

How the Hours Reach Your Account

Employers have three legal ways to get you to the 40-hour minimum, and the method your employer picks changes when the time becomes available to you.

Standard Accrual

You earn one hour of sick leave for every 30 hours worked, starting on day one. A full-time employee working 40 hours a week picks up roughly one hour and 20 minutes of sick leave each week. You still can’t use any of it until day 90.¹

Alternative Accrual

Employers can use a different formula as long as you have at least 24 hours banked by your 120th calendar day of employment and at least 40 hours by your 200th calendar day. These benchmarks reset each year.⁴

Frontloading

Your employer can hand you the full 40 hours or five days in a lump sum at the start of each year, calendar year, or 12-month period. If they frontload, they don’t have to track ongoing accrual and don’t have to allow unused time to carry over into the next year.¹

Carryover and the 80-Hour Cap

If your employer uses either accrual method, unused sick leave has to carry over into the next year. SB 616 raised the maximum accrual cap from 48 hours to 80 hours (ten days). Your employer can stop your balance from growing past 80 hours, but they can’t set the cap any lower.⁴

The two caps do different jobs. You might sit at 80 hours banked but still be limited to using 40 in a single year. The extra hours stay on the books and remain available in future years.

What You Can Use It For

California’s law reaches further than most people assume. You can use sick leave for your own health needs or for a family member’s, and “family member” includes a parent, child, spouse, registered domestic partner, grandparent, grandchild, sibling, or a “designated person” of your choosing.³

Qualifying reasons include:

Diagnosis, treatment, and preventive care, including doctor visits, dental appointments, flu shots, and therapy sessions for you or a family member.
Seeking help related to domestic violence, sexual assault, or stalking: restraining orders, medical attention, counseling, safety planning, or services from a victim advocacy organization. For employers with 25 or more employees, this extends to helping a family member access the same resources.
Appearing in court to comply with a subpoena or court order as a witness, effective January 1, 2025.
For agricultural employees who work outdoors, avoiding hazardous conditions during a local or state emergency involving smoke, heat, or flooding, including when the worksite closes.

Starting January 1, 2026, sick leave can also be used to attend judicial proceedings tied to serious crimes where you or a family member is the victim.³

How the Pay Is Calculated

If you’re a non-exempt hourly employee, sick leave pays at your regular, non-overtime hourly rate. Your employer can calculate that rate one of two ways: your regular rate for the workweek you used the sick leave, or your total non-overtime compensation from the prior 90 days divided by non-overtime hours worked in that stretch. Overtime premium pay stays out of the math either way.³

For salaried exempt employees, sick leave pay is figured the same way the employer handles other paid leave like vacation or PTO.

Do You Need a Doctor’s Note?

Generally, no. Your employer can’t deny paid sick leave just because you didn’t bring in medical certification. You’re entitled to use accrued time on an oral or written request. If your employer has reason to believe you’re using leave for something other than a legitimate purpose, they may ask for documentation, and the reasonableness of both sides matters if the dispute reaches the Labor Commissioner.³

Any medical information your employer does receive has to be kept confidential under the Americans with Disabilities Act, which allows sharing only in narrow situations such as informing supervisors about work restrictions or responding to a government investigation.⁵

What Happens When You Leave the Job

California does not require employers to pay out unused sick leave when you quit, get laid off, or are fired. Your balance sits on the books unless your employer’s policy says otherwise. Sick leave differs from vacation time on this point; vacation has to be paid out at separation.

If the same employer rehires you within 12 months, your previously accrued and unused sick leave has to be reinstated, and you keep accruing from there. The one exception is if your employer already paid out the balance at separation as part of a PTO policy.¹

Retaliation and Attendance Policies

Your employer cannot fire, threaten to fire, demote, suspend, or otherwise discriminate against you for using or trying to use accrued sick leave. Those protections also cover filing a complaint with the Labor Commissioner, cooperating with an investigation, or challenging a company policy that conflicts with the law.³

A separate provision, the “Kin Care” rule under Labor Code Section 233, makes it unlawful for an employer’s attendance policy to count sick leave used to care for a family member as an absence that triggers discipline. Points-based attendance systems that penalize you for using lawful sick leave are themselves unlawful.

What to Do If Your Employer Violates the Law

The Labor Commissioner can investigate violations and order reinstatement, back pay, and payment of sick days that were withheld. The penalties give the process real weight:

For withheld sick leave, three times the dollar value of the sick days withheld, or $250, whichever is greater, up to a total of $4,000.
For other violations, such as firing someone for using sick leave, $50 for each day the violation continued, up to $4,000.
The Labor Commissioner can also charge the employer up to $50 per day per affected employee to cover investigation and enforcement costs.

The Labor Commissioner or Attorney General can file a civil action as well, and a successful case entitles the enforcing party to reasonable attorney’s fees on top of the penalties above.⁶

Local Ordinances May Give You More

The state law sets a floor, not a ceiling. Several California cities, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Oakland, Berkeley, Emeryville, and Santa Monica, have their own paid sick leave ordinances. Where the local rule is more generous, your employer has to follow the local rule. If you’re not sure whether your city has its own ordinance, check with your local labor enforcement office before assuming five days is all you get.

1
California Legislative Information. California Labor Code LAB 246
2
California Legislative Information. California Labor Code Section 246
3
California Department of Industrial Relations. California Paid Sick Leave: Frequently Asked Questions
4
LegiScan. California SB 616 – Sick Days: Paid Sick Days Accrual and Use
5
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Enforcement Guidance on Disability-Related Inquiries and Medical Examinations of Employees under the ADA
6
California Legislative Information. California Labor Code LAB 248.5