Michigan Earned Sick Time Act: Accrual, Use, and Protections

Michigan’s Earned Sick Time Act requires almost every employer in the state to let workers earn paid time off for illness, medical care, family needs, and certain safety-related reasons. You earn at least one hour of paid sick time for every 30 hours you work. How much you can actually use in a year depends on your employer’s size: up to 72 hours at employers with 11 or more employees, and up to 40 hours at small businesses with 10 or fewer.¹ The law took effect on February 21, 2025.²

Which Workers and Employers Are Covered

The Act reaches any employer with at least one employee, including private businesses, nonprofits, schools, LLCs, and state and local government. The only fully excluded employer is the federal government.³

Most employees are covered, including part-time, seasonal, and temporary workers. A handful of categories are not: federal employees, unpaid interns and trainees, workers covered by Michigan’s Youth Employment Standards Act, and people who genuinely set their own schedules under a policy that doesn’t penalize them for working fewer hours.³

Employer size sets the annual cap. A business qualifies as a small business only while 10 or fewer people work for it in a given week, counting full-time, part-time, temporary staff, and workers supplied through staffing agencies. Once an employer has more than 10 employees on payroll for 20 or more workweeks in the current or previous calendar year, it loses that status and the 72-hour cap applies.³

How You Earn and Keep Sick Time

Accrual starts your first day on the job. You earn one hour of paid sick time for every 30 hours you work, and that clock runs from day one even if you can’t yet use the hours. An employer can require new hires to wait up to 120 calendar days before actually taking any of it.¹ During that window, the balance still grows.

Under the standard accrual method, unused hours carry into the next benefit year. You don’t forfeit banked hours when the calendar flips. The annual usage cap still applies, though: carrying 20 hours into a new year at a large employer doesn’t raise your ceiling above 72 hours for that year, and small-business workers stay capped at 40.¹

Frontloading Instead of Accrual

An employer can skip hour-by-hour tracking by giving you the full year’s amount up front: 72 hours at larger employers, 40 hours at small businesses. If your employer frontloads, it doesn’t have to carry unused hours into the next year and doesn’t have to pay them out at year-end.¹ Part-time workers who are frontloaded get a proportional amount based on a written estimate of their expected hours; if you end up working more than that estimate, your employer must top off your bank using the standard accrual formula.

Coming Back to the Same Employer

If you leave and are rehired by the same employer within two months, your previously accrued, unused sick time comes back with you, and you start earning more right away. The one exception: if the employer already paid out your unused balance when you left, it doesn’t have to restore it.⁴

What You Can Use Sick Time For

The Act lists specific qualifying reasons. You can use earned sick time for:

Your own physical or mental illness, injury, or health condition, including treatment, diagnosis, and preventive care.
The same kinds of care for a qualifying family member.
Medical, counseling, legal, relocation, or victim-services needs relating to domestic violence or sexual assault, whether you or a family member is the victim.
Meetings at a child’s school or care provider about the child’s health, disability, or the effects of domestic violence or sexual assault.
Closure of your workplace or a child’s school by order of a public official, or a health authority’s determination that you or a family member has been exposed to a communicable disease and shouldn’t be in the community.

That last category doesn’t require an actual diagnosis. Exposure is enough.⁵

Who Counts as a Family Member

The Act’s definition is broad. It includes your spouse or domestic partner; biological, adopted, foster, and step-children; children of a domestic partner and legal wards; parents and stepparents, including your spouse’s or domestic partner’s parents; grandparents; grandchildren; and siblings. It also covers anyone related by blood or by a close relationship that’s the equivalent of family.³

Notice, Documentation, and Costs

When you can plan ahead — a scheduled surgery, a therapy appointment — your employer can require up to seven days’ advance notice. For unexpected needs, you just have to notify your employer as soon as practical.⁶ Employers can require you to follow normal call-in procedures, but those procedures can’t be used to effectively deny leave the law entitles you to.

Documentation is only allowed for absences of more than three consecutive days. Depending on the reason, that might be a healthcare provider’s note, a police report, or a court record. You have up to 15 days after the request to provide it.⁷

If getting that documentation costs you out of pocket, such as a copay for a visit made just to obtain a note, your employer has to reimburse you.⁷ An employer can require proof and then bill you for it.

You Can’t Be Punished for Using It

Your employer cannot fire, threaten, discipline, or discriminate against you for using earned sick time, filing a complaint, cooperating with a state investigation, or telling anyone about their rights under the Act. Attendance-point systems can’t count ESTA-protected absences against you. Earned sick time cannot be treated as an unexcused absence under any no-fault attendance policy.⁸

Retaliation is rarely stated out loud. It usually shows up as discipline or termination that closely follows protected leave, with a shifting explanation. If that pattern fits your situation, keep dated notes of your absences, your call-ins, and any conversations about them.

Filing a Complaint

If you believe your employer violated any part of the Act — shorted your hours, refused a valid request, retaliated against you — you can file a complaint with the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity within three years of the violation.⁹ The department can order the employer to pay withheld sick time, back pay, and any damages you suffered, and can order reinstatement if you lost your job. If the employer refuses to comply after the department finds reasonable cause, the department can sue on your behalf.

Employers also face civil fines:⁹

Up to $1,000 per retaliation violation.
Up to eight times the employee’s normal hourly wage for failing to provide earned sick time.
Up to $100 per willful posting violation.

Three years is a long filing window compared to many workplace claims, but memories fade and records disappear. If you think you’ve been denied sick time or punished for taking it, write down what happened while it’s fresh, gather your pay stubs and any written communications, and file sooner rather than later.

1
Michigan Legislature. Michigan Compiled Laws 408.963 – Earned Sick Time Act
2
Michigan Legislature. House Bill 4002 of 2025 Public Act 2 of 2025
3
Michigan Legislature. Michigan Compiled Laws 408.962 – Definitions
4
Michigan Legislature. Michigan Compiled Laws 408.965
5
Michigan Legislature. Michigan Compiled Laws 408.964 – Earned Sick Time Act
6
Michigan Legislature. Michigan Compiled Laws 408.964 – Earned Sick Time Permissible Uses
7
Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity. Earned Sick Time Act Frequently Asked Questions
8
Michigan Legislature. Michigan Compiled Laws 408.966 – Exercise of Rights Under Act
9
Michigan Legislature. Michigan Compiled Laws 408.967 – Violation of Act