Do Part-Time Employees Get Benefits in New York?

Part-time employees in New York are entitled to a real set of benefits under state law: paid sick leave, paid family leave, short-term disability coverage, and the state minimum wage all apply regardless of how few hours you work. Unemployment insurance is available once you meet earnings thresholds, and federal rules can open the door to retirement plan participation and continued health coverage in specific situations. Health insurance itself is the main gap — no New York law requires employers to offer it to part-time workers.

Paid Sick Leave

Every private-sector employee in New York accrues sick leave, including part-time and seasonal workers. You earn one hour of sick leave for every 30 hours worked, and how much you can bank per year depends on your employer’s size and income.¹

Employers with 1–4 employees and net income at or below $1 million: up to 40 hours of unpaid sick leave per calendar year.
Employers with 1–4 employees and net income above $1 million: up to 40 hours of paid sick leave per calendar year.
Employers with 5–99 employees: up to 40 hours of paid sick leave per calendar year.
Employers with 100 or more employees: up to 56 hours of paid sick leave per calendar year.¹

You can use the leave for your own health needs or to care for a family member. There’s no service requirement to start earning it — accrual begins on your first day — and most employers must let you begin using accrued leave after 120 days on the job. Retaliation complaints go to the Department of Labor’s Anti-Retaliation Unit.²

Paid Family Leave

New York Paid Family Leave gives you job-protected, paid time off to bond with a new child, care for a family member with a serious health condition, or handle needs tied to a family member’s military deployment. Part-time workers qualify, but the eligibility clock runs differently depending on your schedule.³

Working 20 or more hours per week: eligible after 26 consecutive weeks of employment.
Working fewer than 20 hours per week: eligible after 175 days of work.

For 2026, PFL pays 67% of your average weekly wage, capped at $1,228.53 per week (67% of the statewide average weekly wage of $1,833.63).⁴ The program is funded through employee payroll deductions; the 2026 contribution rate is 0.432% of gross wages, with a maximum annual deduction of $411.91.⁵

While you’re on leave, your employer must keep your health insurance in force on the same terms as if you were working, and you’re entitled to return to your same job or a comparable position when the leave ends.³

Short-Term Disability

New York requires nearly all employers to carry disability insurance for injuries and illnesses that happen off the job. It’s a separate program from workers’ compensation, which handles on-the-job injuries.⁶ Part-time workers are generally eligible after four consecutive weeks with a covered employer.

Benefits start on the eighth day of disability and pay 50% of your average weekly wage, capped at $170 per week, for up to 26 weeks in any 52-week period.⁷ The $170 ceiling makes the practical benefit modest: if you earn $600 a week, you receive $170, not $300.

Unemployment Insurance

Unemployment in New York turns on earnings, not hours or job title, so part-time workers qualify on the same terms as anyone else. For claims filed in 2026, you must have earned at least $3,500 in one calendar quarter of your base period, and your total base-period wages must equal at least 1.5 times the wages in your highest-paid quarter.⁸

Partial Benefits When Your Hours Are Cut

If you’re still working but your hours have dropped, partial unemployment may make up part of the difference. New York uses an hours-based tier system:⁹

10 hours or fewer: full weekly benefit, no reduction.
11–16 hours: benefit reduced by 25%.
17–21 hours: benefit reduced by 50%.
22–30 hours: benefit reduced by 75%.
31 or more hours: no benefit that week.

There’s also an earnings ceiling. If your gross weekly pay tops the maximum benefit rate, you get nothing that week no matter how few hours you worked. A single high-paying shift can knock out a claim that hours alone would have allowed.⁹

Minimum Wage

Part-time workers are entitled to the same minimum wage as full-time employees. For 2026:

New York City, Long Island, and Westchester County: $17.00 per hour.
Rest of New York State: $16.00 per hour.¹⁰

Tipped employees in certain industries may have a lower cash wage, but the total with tips must reach the applicable minimum. Underpayment complaints go to the New York Department of Labor.

Health Insurance

This is where part-timers most often lose out. Neither New York law nor federal law requires employers to offer health coverage to part-time workers.

Under the Affordable Care Act, employers with 50 or more full-time equivalent employees must offer affordable coverage to workers averaging at least 30 hours per week, who count as full-time for ACA purposes. Below that 30-hour line, there is no federal penalty for excluding a worker.¹¹ Smaller employers have no federal obligation to offer coverage at all. Whether you get benefits comes down to company policy.

COBRA When Hours Are Reduced

If you were covered under an employer plan and your hours were cut enough to lose that coverage, the reduction counts as a qualifying event under COBRA. You can continue the group plan for up to 18 months, but you’ll pay the full premium (both the employee and employer shares) plus a 2% administrative fee.¹² COBRA applies to employers with 20 or more employees; New York’s mini-COBRA law extends similar rights at smaller employers.

Retirement Plans

New York doesn’t require employers to offer retirement plans, and traditional ERISA rules have long kept most part-time workers out. Plans that use a service requirement generally must let employees participate once they hit 1,000 hours of service in a 12-month period — roughly 20 hours a week.¹³

The SECURE 2.0 Act changed the picture for long-term part-timers. For plan years beginning after December 31, 2024, employees who complete at least 500 hours of service in each of two consecutive 12-month periods must be allowed to make elective deferrals. The earlier SECURE Act rule required three consecutive years at 500 hours; SECURE 2.0 cut it to two.¹⁴ If you’ve been putting in roughly 10 or more hours a week at the same employer for two years, ask HR whether you’re now eligible to contribute.

Federal Leave Rules That May Reach You

New York PFL is generally more useful to part-timers than the federal Family and Medical Leave Act, but two federal protections still matter.

FMLA

FMLA provides up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave for serious health conditions, new children, and military caregiving. The eligibility bar is high for part-time workers: 1,250 hours of service in the prior 12 months, which works out to about 24 hours a week, and your employer must have 50 or more employees within a 75-mile radius.¹⁵

When FMLA and New York PFL both apply, employers can require the leaves to run concurrently. You generally won’t stack a full 12 weeks of FMLA on top of a separate stretch of PFL; PFL provides the paycheck during a period that FMLA leaves unpaid.¹⁶

ADA Reasonable Accommodation

The Americans with Disabilities Act can require your employer to provide unpaid leave, a modified schedule, or other reasonable accommodations if you have a qualifying disability. There’s no hours threshold and no minimum tenure — it applies to any employee at a company with 15 or more workers, part-time or full-time, from day one.¹⁷ That makes it a meaningful backstop where FMLA’s hours requirement rules you out.

1
The State of New York. New York Paid Sick Leave
2
New York State Senate. New York Labor Law 196-B – Sick Leave Requirements
3
Justia. New York Workers Compensation Law Article 9 – Disability Benefits
4
Workers’ Compensation Board. NYS Workers Compensation Board – Paid Family Leave 2026
5
Department of Financial Services. Health Insurers – PFL Decision on Premium Rate for Family Leave 2026
6
Workers’ Compensation Board. Disability Benefits and Paid Family Leave Insurance
7
New York State Senate. New York Workers Compensation Law Section 204
8
Department of Labor. Before You File a Claim for Unemployment FAQs
9
Department of Labor. Partial Unemployment Eligibility
10
The State of New York. New York State’s Minimum Wage
11
Internal Revenue Service. Determining if an Employer Is an Applicable Large Employer
12
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 USC 1163 – Qualifying Event
13
eCFR. 29 CFR Part 2530 – Rules and Regulations for Minimum Standards for Employee Pension Benefit Plans
14
Internal Revenue Service. Additional Guidance with Respect to Long-Term Part-Time Employees
15
eCFR. 29 CFR 825.110 – Eligible Employee
16
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 28 – The Family and Medical Leave Act
17
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Enforcement Guidance on Reasonable Accommodation and Undue Hardship Under the ADA