How Many Sick Days in Colorado? Accrual, Use, and Pay

Colorado employees earn up to 48 hours of paid sick leave each year under the Healthy Families and Workplaces Act, which works out to about six full days for someone on a 40-hour schedule. So the short answer to how many sick days you get in Colorado is six, give or take, depending on your shift length. The law covers nearly every worker in the state, and your employer’s size doesn’t change what you’re owed.

How You Earn the Hours

You accrue one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours you work. Accrual starts on your first day, and you can use the leave as soon as you earn it. Employers can’t impose a waiting period or probationary window before you’re eligible.¹

The yearly cap is 48 hours. Your employer can set a higher ceiling voluntarily, but 48 is the floor the law guarantees. If you don’t use everything you earn, you can carry up to 48 unused hours into the next year. Carryover protects the hours you’ve banked, but it doesn’t raise your annual usage limit: your employer isn’t required to let you use more than 48 hours in any single year.¹

Instead of tracking accrual hour by hour, your employer can front-load the full 48 hours at the start of the benefit year. If they go that route, all 48 hours are available to you on day one.²

Exempt salaried employees who aren’t eligible for overtime accrue based on a 40-hour workweek, or their normal workweek if it’s shorter.¹

Who Is Covered

The Healthy Families and Workplaces Act applies to every employer in Colorado, regardless of size or industry, and to every employee working in the state, including part-time, temporary, and seasonal workers. The only notable exclusions are federal government employees and certain railroad workers covered by the Railroad Unemployment Insurance Act.²

If your employer already offers a paid leave policy that meets or exceeds HFWA’s requirements and allows the same uses, they don’t have to create a separate sick leave bank. The existing policy satisfies the law as long as the hours and permitted uses line up.¹

What You Can Use the Hours For

You don’t need to be seriously ill. HFWA covers a broad set of health, safety, and family reasons:³

Your own mental or physical illness, injury, or health condition, plus preventive care, diagnosis, and treatment.
Caring for a family member who’s sick, injured, or needs preventive care or treatment.
Medical care, counseling, victim services, legal help, or relocation if you or a family member is a victim of domestic abuse or sexual assault.
Bereavement, including funeral attendance and handling financial or legal matters after a family member’s death.
Caring for a family member whose school or care facility closes because of weather, utility outages, or similar events.
Evacuating your own home due to severe weather, utility failure, or similar emergencies.

The definition of “family member” is wider than most people assume. It covers immediate family, anyone who stood in a parental role for you when you were a minor, a child you care for in a parental role, and any person for whom you’re responsible for arranging health- or safety-related care. If you’re the one an elderly neighbor relies on for medical appointments, for example, that can qualify.³

What You Get Paid

HFWA leave pays your regular hourly rate or salary, and never less than Colorado’s applicable minimum wage. For most workers, that’s it: you get your usual pay for the hours you’d otherwise have worked.⁴

A few pay structures work differently:

Tipped employees paid under a tip credit get bumped up to the full minimum wage during leave, since the law doesn’t make you rely on unpredictable tips while home sick.
Commissioned employees receive the higher of their base rate or minimum wage. If there’s no base rate, leave pay includes commissions and any other set rates.
If your leave falls on a shift that would have carried a differential, you get that differential rate.
When your rate varies and can’t be set in advance, leave pay is calculated from your average pay over the 30 calendar days before the leave, excluding overtime premiums, bonuses, and holiday pay.

Employers don’t have to include overtime premiums, discretionary bonuses, or holiday pay in your sick leave rate.⁴

Asking For Leave

You don’t have to name the HFWA or cite a statute. Just tell your employer you need to take paid sick leave. For foreseeable leave, like a scheduled appointment, give notice as soon as practicable. Your employer can set reasonable notice procedures in writing, but they can’t deny your leave only because you didn’t follow those procedures perfectly. For unforeseeable leave, you notify them as soon as you reasonably can.²

Your employer can’t require you to disclose specific details about your health or about domestic violence or sexual assault. Any health information they do receive must be kept confidential and stored separately from your regular personnel file. The one exception on documentation: if you’re out four or more consecutive days, your employer may ask for reasonable documentation that the leave was for a qualifying purpose, but still can’t demand specific medical details.

Your employer also can’t make you find a replacement worker as a condition of taking leave.

More Hours During a Public Health Emergency

When a public health emergency is declared, HFWA raises the ceiling. Your employer must supplement your accrued leave so you have access to at least 80 hours total if you normally work 40 or more hours per week. Part-time employees get the greater of their scheduled hours over the following 14 days or their average hours worked in the 14 days before the emergency was declared or the leave was requested.⁵

The supplement includes any hours you’ve already accrued, not on top of them. If you already have 20 hours banked, your employer tops you up to 80 total. You can use this emergency leave until four weeks after the emergency is officially terminated or suspended, no documentation is required, and each employee is eligible for one round of supplemental leave per emergency, even if the declaration is extended or amended.⁵

If You Leave the Job

Colorado doesn’t require employers to pay out unused sick leave when you separate, whether you quit, are laid off, or are fired. Unused hours expire at separation regardless of how many you’ve banked.¹

If the same employer rehires you within six months, your previously accrued sick leave is typically reinstated. Worth remembering if you leave and later return.

If Your Employer Retaliates

Employers can’t retaliate against you for requesting or using sick leave. Retaliation includes demotion, reduced hours, discipline, or termination tied to your use of leave.²

If your employer denies qualifying leave or punishes you for taking it, you can file a complaint with the Colorado Division of Labor Standards and Statistics.

1
Justia Law. Colorado Revised Statutes 8-13.3-403 – Paid Sick Leave – Accrual
2
Colorado Department of Labor and Employment. Interpretive Notice and Formal Opinion 6B – Paid Sick Leave under the Healthy Families and Workplaces Act
3
Colorado Department of Labor and Employment. Colorado Healthy Families and Workplaces Act – Revised August 7, 2023
4
Colorado Department of Labor and Employment. INFO 6B – Rights and Obligations Under HFWA
5
Justia Law. Colorado Revised Statutes 8-13.3-405 – Additional Paid Sick Leave During a Public Health Emergency