California Sick Days Increase: 5-Day Minimum, Accrual, and Carryover

California paid sick leave is set at a minimum of five days or 40 hours per year, whichever is greater, for nearly every employee who has worked at least 30 days for the same employer within a year.¹ Your employer can offer more, but not less, and local city ordinances in places like San Francisco and Los Angeles sometimes require more.

The Five-Day, 40-Hour Minimum

Every covered employer in California must provide at least five days or 40 hours of paid sick leave each year, and the “whichever is greater” language is doing real work. If you run four 10-hour shifts a week, five days of your schedule equals 50 hours, not 40, so you get 50. If you work standard eight-hour shifts, five days and 40 hours are the same number.¹

Who Is Covered

The law reaches almost every worker in the state: full-time, part-time, per diem, temporary, and in-home supportive services employees are all included once they have logged 30 days with the same employer in a 12-month period. Staffing agency workers are covered too, with the agency responsible for providing the leave.²

A short list of workers is fully excluded. Railroad employees are not covered. Flight deck and cabin crew members are exempt if their airline already provides equivalent compensated time off. Retired annuitants working for government entities after retirement are exempt. Construction workers under a qualifying collective bargaining agreement are also exempt, provided the contract meets specific requirements for wages, overtime, and paid leave. Employees under other qualifying union contracts (with paid sick days or equivalent paid time off, premium overtime, and a base rate at least 30 percent above the state minimum wage) are partially exempt but keep the procedural and anti-retaliation protections.³

How You Earn Sick Leave

Standard Accrual

Under the default rule, you earn at least one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours you work, beginning on your first day. You can start using the time once you hit your 90th day of employment. Exempt (non-overtime-eligible) employees are treated as working 40 hours per week for accrual purposes, unless their normal schedule is shorter.¹

Alternative Accrual

Employers can use a different accrual schedule, but it has to meet two checkpoints: you must have at least 24 hours banked by your 120th calendar day of employment, and at least 40 hours by your 200th calendar day. Those same checkpoints apply each calendar year or 12-month period after that.¹

Frontloading

Many employers skip accrual tracking entirely by giving you the full five days or 40 hours at the start of each benefit year. When they do that, no accrual math and no carryover is required.¹

Carryover and the Annual Usage Cap

Unused accrued sick leave automatically rolls over into the next year. Your employer can cap your total accrued balance at 80 hours (10 days). Once you hit that ceiling, accrual pauses until you use some time and drop below it.

Separately, your employer can cap actual usage at 40 hours or five days per year, whichever is greater, even if your bank is larger. The extra banked hours are not forfeited; they stay available for future years, within the 80-hour cap.¹

What You Can Use It For

The list of qualifying reasons has grown. As of 2026, you can use paid sick days for any of the following:

Your own diagnosis, care, or treatment of an existing health condition, plus preventive care like checkups and flu shots.
The same types of care for a spouse, registered domestic partner, child, parent, grandparent, grandchild, sibling, or a designated person of your choice (one designated person per 12-month period).
Purposes related to being a victim, or having a family member who is a victim, of domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking, or another qualifying act of violence.
Jury duty, or complying with a subpoena or court order as a witness (added January 1, 2025).
Attending judicial proceedings for certain serious crimes you or a family member experienced, including plea, sentencing, and post-conviction release hearings (added January 1, 2026).
For outdoor agricultural workers, avoiding smoke, heat, or flooding caused by a declared local or state emergency.

Your employer cannot ask why you are taking sick leave or require documentation of the specific reason. They also cannot make you find someone to cover your shift as a condition of using the time.⁴

How Your Sick Pay Is Calculated

Sick leave is paid at your regular rate, not a reduced rate. For non-exempt hourly workers, the employer picks one of two methods: your regular non-overtime hourly rate for the workweek you used the leave, or your total compensation over the previous 90 days (excluding overtime premiums) divided by non-overtime hours worked in that period. For salaried exempt employees, sick leave pay follows the same calculation the employer uses for other paid leave like vacation.²

What Happens When You Leave or Come Back

Unlike vacation, unused sick leave does not have to be paid out when you quit, are fired, or retire. This surprises a lot of people who have been banking hours. But if you return to the same employer within 12 months, your previously accrued and unused balance must be reinstated. The exception: if your employer already paid out that time under a combined PTO policy when you left, they do not have to reinstate it.¹

Combined PTO Policies

Your employer does not have to call the leave “sick leave.” A combined paid-time-off policy that lumps vacation and sick time together satisfies the law, as long as it offers at least 40 hours or five days per year that you can use for all the qualifying reasons listed above and meets the same accrual, carryover, and anti-retaliation rules.² If your employer already offers PTO above these minimums, nothing about your total entitlement has to change.

How to Check Your Balance

Your available sick leave balance must appear on every pay stub, or on a separate document issued the same day as your paycheck. If your employer offers unlimited sick leave, the pay stub can simply state “unlimited.” Employers also have to display a Labor Commissioner workplace poster where employees can read it, provide written sick leave information at the time of hire, and keep accrual and usage records for three years.²

Retaliation Protections

Your employer cannot fire you, threaten you, demote you, cut your hours, or otherwise punish you for using sick days, trying to use them, filing a complaint, or cooperating with an investigation.⁴ The law creates a rebuttable presumption of retaliation when an employer takes adverse action within 30 days of a protected activity, meaning the burden shifts to the employer to prove the action was for an unrelated reason.

If the Labor Commissioner finds a violation, remedies can include reinstatement, back pay, and payment of any sick days unlawfully withheld. On top of that, employers face penalties of three times the dollar amount of sick pay withheld (or $250, whichever is greater, up to $4,000), plus $50 per day for each day a non-pay violation continued, up to $4,000.⁵ The Labor Commissioner or the Attorney General can also bring a civil action for the same penalties plus attorney’s fees.

Local Ordinances May Require More

The state law is a floor, not a ceiling. Several California cities, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Oakland, have their own paid sick leave ordinances that may require more than five days per year depending on employer size and local terms. If your city’s rule is more generous, your employer has to follow it, and you get whichever standard provides more leave.³ If you are not sure which ordinance applies to where you work, your city’s labor office is the place to check.

1
California Legislative Information. California Labor Code LAB 246
2
California Department of Industrial Relations. California Paid Sick Leave: Frequently Asked Questions
3
California Legislative Information. California Senate Bill 616 – Sick Days: Paid Sick Days Accrual and Use
4
California Legislative Information. California Labor Code LAB 246.5
5
California Legislative Information. California Labor Code LAB 248.5