Do Part-Time Employees Get Paid Sick Leave in California?

Part-time employees in California are entitled to paid sick leave on the same terms as full-time workers. If you work for the same California employer for at least 30 days within a year, you start accruing paid sick leave from your first day and can use at least 40 hours (five days) per year once you have been employed for 90 calendar days.¹ The law covers part-time, temporary, per diem, and seasonal workers.

A few narrow categories sit outside the law — certain airline flight and cabin crew, railroad employees, retired government annuitants returning to public work, and construction workers under specific collective bargaining agreements — but those exclusions don’t apply to the ordinary part-time job.²

How Much Sick Leave You Earn

Your employer picks the method, but every method has to land you at the same minimum: 40 hours or five days of usable sick leave each year.

Hour-for-Hour Accrual

The default is one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours worked, starting your first day. For a part-timer putting in 20 hours a week, that comes out to roughly one new hour of leave every week and a half. Unused hours carry over year to year, though your employer can cap total accrued leave at 80 hours and cap annual use at 40 hours.³

Frontloading

An employer can skip the accrual math and give you the full 40 hours or five days at the start of each year, calendar year, or 12-month period. When they frontload the full amount, they don’t have to let unused time carry over.³

Alternative Schedules

Employers may use a different accrual schedule as long as you have at least 24 hours of sick leave banked by day 120 of employment and at least 40 hours banked by day 200.³

When You Can Use It and What For

You can start using accrued sick leave on your 90th calendar day with the employer.³ The permitted uses are broader than many workers realize:

Diagnosis, treatment, or preventive medical care for yourself or a family member.
Needs related to domestic violence, sexual assault, or stalking, including medical attention, counseling, safety planning, or legal help.
For outdoor agricultural workers, time off during a declared smoke, heat, or flooding emergency.

“Family member” is defined widely: spouse, registered domestic partner, children (biological, adopted, foster, or step), parents (including in-laws, foster parents, and legal guardians), grandparents, grandchildren, and siblings.⁴ You can also name one additional “designated person” per 12-month period for whom you may use sick leave, even if they don’t fit any of the family categories. Your employer can limit you to one such designation per year but cannot refuse to recognize one.¹

How To Ask for It

An oral request is enough. You can tell your employer verbally or in writing, and the employer must grant the time.⁴ If the leave is foreseeable — a scheduled appointment, say — give advance notice. When it isn’t, notify your employer as soon as practical.¹

Your employer cannot require a doctor’s note as a condition of using paid sick leave. The Labor Commissioner has stated this plainly: leave is not conditioned on medical certification, and the employer may not deny sick leave just because you lack one.¹ If you run out of sick leave and keep missing work, a separate attendance policy may apply and documentation rules outside the sick leave law could come into play.

Your employer may set a minimum use increment of up to two hours. So a one-hour appointment can be charged as a two-hour block, but not more than that.¹

How Your Sick Pay Is Calculated

For a part-time worker with uneven hours, this part matters. For non-exempt (hourly) workers, employers use one of two formulas:

The regular non-overtime rate for the workweek in which you use the leave, calculated by dividing total non-overtime pay by total non-overtime hours worked that week.
A 90-day lookback: total compensation over the prior 90 days (excluding overtime premium pay) divided by non-overtime hours worked during those full pay periods.

The 90-day method pulls in commissions, non-discretionary bonuses, and piece-rate earnings, which can push your sick-day pay above your base hourly wage.¹ Exempt salaried employees are paid at their regular salary rate; non-discretionary bonuses don’t factor in for them.⁵

Your pay stub, or a document issued alongside it, must show the amount of sick leave you have available.¹ If it doesn’t, that’s a problem worth raising.

What Happens If You Leave the Job

Unlike vacation, accrued unused sick leave does not have to be paid out when you quit, get laid off, or are fired. The exception is if your employer’s own policy, or a combined PTO plan, promises a payout.¹

If the same employer rehires you within 12 months, your previously accrued sick leave must be restored, provided it wasn’t already cashed out under a PTO policy when you left. Return after more than 12 months and the slate starts clean.¹

If Your Employer Denies Leave or Retaliates

Firing, demoting, suspending, or disciplining you for using or requesting sick leave is illegal. So is an attendance policy that counts lawful sick leave as a disciplinable absence.⁶

The Labor Commissioner can impose penalties when an employer unlawfully withholds paid sick days: three times the dollar value of the withheld leave or $250, whichever is greater, up to a $4,000 cap. If the violation causes further harm, such as a firing tied to a leave request, a separate $50-per-day penalty applies, also capped at $4,000. A civil action brought by the state can also result in reinstatement, back pay, and attorney’s fees.⁷

You can file a complaint with the Labor Commissioner’s Office online, by mail, or in person at any local office. For retaliation complaints, the deadline is generally one year from the date of the adverse action.⁸

Local Ordinances May Give You More

State law is the floor. Cities including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley have their own paid sick leave ordinances that may provide faster accrual, higher annual caps, or wider coverage. Where a local rule is more generous, your employer has to follow it.¹

One narrow carve-out: as of January 1, 2024, local ordinances cannot override state law on pay stub statements, the timing of sick pay payments, the lending of sick leave, or whether sick leave gets paid out at termination. On those specific points, state law controls.¹ Everywhere else, check whether your city rule gives you something better than the state minimum.

1
California Department of Industrial Relations. California Paid Sick Leave: Frequently Asked Questions
2
California Legislative Information. California Labor Code 245.5
3
California Legislative Information. California Labor Code 246
4
California Legislative Information. California Labor Code 246.5
5
Department of Industrial Relations – Division of Labor Standards Enforcement. Healthy Workplace Healthy Families Act of 2014 – Calculating Payment of Paid Sick Leave
6
California Department of Industrial Relations. Laws that Prohibit Retaliation and Discrimination
7
California Legislative Information. California Labor Code 248.5
8
California Department of Industrial Relations. Labor Commissioner’s Office Retaliation and Discrimination Complaints