Chicago Paid Leave Ordinance: Accrual, Carryover, and Payout

Chicago’s Paid Leave and Paid Sick and Safe Leave Ordinance has required most employers in the city to give workers two separate banks of paid time off since July 1, 2024. For every 35 hours worked inside Chicago, a covered employee earns one hour of general paid leave and one hour of paid sick and safe leave, up to 40 hours of each per year.¹ The two banks have different rules on when you can use them, what counts as a qualifying reason, how much carries over, and whether unused hours get paid out when you leave the job.

Who the Ordinance Covers

You’re covered if you work at least 80 hours for a single employer while physically inside Chicago during any 120-day period.² Where the employer is headquartered doesn’t matter. What matters is where the work happens. Once you hit that 80-hour mark, coverage continues for as long as you stay with the employer.³

Remote workers whose home is inside city limits qualify, as do delivery and sales staff doing their Chicago hours there, and anyone on a job site in the city. Domestic workers — people doing home care, housekeeping, and similar work — are specifically covered, including when they work for a single private household, as long as they still meet the 80-hour threshold.⁴

How the Two Banks Build Up

Accrual happens at the same rate for both types: one hour of paid leave and one hour of paid sick leave for every 35 hours worked, tracked in separate balances.¹ The annual cap is 40 hours of each per benefit year. A full-time schedule hits both caps in roughly ten months. Employers can be more generous but cannot cap you below 40.³

Some employers skip hour-by-hour tracking and front-load the full 40 hours of each type at the start of the benefit year.⁵ You get the hours sooner, but it changes what happens to leftovers at year-end (covered below). Waiting periods still apply either way.

When You Can Start Using Your Leave

The two banks don’t open on the same day. Paid sick leave becomes usable 30 days after your start date. General paid leave has a longer wait at 90 days.³ Both clocks run from the date you were hired, and you also need to have crossed the 80-hours-in-120-days coverage line before drawing on either bank.

What Each Bank Is For

Paid Leave

General paid leave is reason-free. You can use it for vacation, a school event, errands, rest, anything at all. Your employer cannot demand an explanation or treat you worse for how you spent the time.

Paid Sick and Safe Leave

Paid sick and safe leave is restricted to specific qualifying reasons. The sick side covers your own illness, injury, or medical appointments, and the same for a family member you’re caring for. It also applies when a public health emergency closes your workplace or your child’s school or daycare.

The safe side covers absences tied to domestic violence, sexual assault, or stalking affecting you or a family member — time to get medical care, legal or social services, relocate, or attend court. Pulling from the right bank matters: a qualifying medical or safety reason should come out of sick and safe leave, not your general paid leave balance.

Notice, Documentation, and Minimum Increments

For foreseeable absences, your employer can require up to seven days of advance notice. For sudden ones, you need to let them know as soon as reasonably possible on the day you’re out. The specific notification procedure has to be written down in a policy and applied the same way to everyone.³

Documentation like a doctor’s note can only be required if you’re out for more than three consecutive workdays. Shorter absences don’t need to be proven.

Employers can set minimum usage increments, but the ordinance caps those too. The smallest block they can force you to take is four hours for paid leave and two hours for paid sick leave.⁵ They can allow smaller increments but not require larger ones.

Checking Your Balance

Every pay period, your employer has to show you how much of each type of leave you’ve accrued, used, and still have available. This typically shows up on a pay stub or payroll portal, but can be delivered in another document or electronic system.² Catching errors early matters, because when an employer fails to keep proper records the ordinance presumes the dispute in the employee’s favor.

What Carries Over at Year-End

Unused hours don’t always disappear when the benefit year resets. Under the standard accrual method, you can carry forward up to 16 hours of paid leave and up to 80 hours of paid sick leave into the next year.¹ Carried-over paid leave hours sit on top of the 40-hour cap in the sense that new accrual still proceeds normally.

Front-loading changes the paid leave side only. Front-loaded general paid leave does not carry over at all — unused hours expire when the benefit year ends. Front-loaded paid sick leave still carries over up to 80 hours.⁵

Payout When You Leave the Job

Paid sick leave is never paid out at separation, regardless of employer size. Paid leave payouts depend on how many covered employees your employer has:¹

Large employers with 101 or more covered employees must pay out all unused paid leave.
Medium employers with 51 to 100 covered employees must pay out all unused paid leave. A transitional 16-hour cap that applied before July 1, 2025 has ended.
Small employers with 1 to 50 covered employees are not required to pay out unused paid leave.

If your paid leave was front-loaded, the payout equals 40 hours minus whatever you already used during the benefit year. If you already used more than 40 hours before separation, nothing is owed.⁵

How It Fits with State and Federal Leave Laws

Illinois has its own Paid Leave for All Workers Act that took effect January 1, 2024, but employees covered by Chicago’s ordinance are excluded from the state law — the city rules apply instead.⁶ If you split your work between Chicago and other parts of Illinois, your Chicago hours fall under the city ordinance and your other hours may fall under the state act.

At the federal level, the Family and Medical Leave Act gives up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave for qualifying situations. Your employer can require you to use Chicago paid leave at the same time as FMLA leave when the reason qualifies under both.⁷ The two generally run concurrently rather than stacking, unless your employer agrees otherwise.

Penalties, Damages, and Suing Your Employer

The Chicago Office of Labor Standards investigates complaints and brings enforcement actions. Violations such as denying required leave, failing to keep records, or skipping an owed payout carry penalties of $1,000 to $3,000 per offense. If your employer can’t produce proper leave records, the ordinance presumes a violation occurred, and the employer has to overcome that with clear and convincing evidence.

An employee who was denied leave they were owed may recover damages equal to three times the value of the withheld leave, plus attorney fees. You also have a private right of action, meaning you can file a civil lawsuit directly without waiting for a city investigation. You just have to wait until the next regular payday or 16 days after the violation, whichever comes first. There’s no requirement to warn the employer in advance. Retaliation for filing a complaint or exercising any right under the ordinance is prohibited.²

1
Chicago Office of Labor Standards. Paid Leave and Paid Sick Leave Fact Sheet
2
City of Chicago. Paid Leave and Paid Sick Leave
3
Chicago Office of Labor Standards. Paid Leave and Paid Sick and Safe Leave Frequently Asked Questions
4
American Legal Publishing. Municipal Code of Chicago – Chapter 6-130 Chicago Paid Leave and Paid Sick and Safe Leave Ordinance
5
Chicago Office of Labor Standards. Chicago Office of Labor Standards Front-Loading Guidance
6
Illinois Department of Labor. Paid Leave for All Workers Act FAQ
7
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet #28: The Family and Medical Leave Act