Minnesota Paid Sick Leave: Accrual, Uses, and Protections

If you work in Minnesota, you earn paid sick leave under the state’s Earned Sick and Safe Time (ESST) law: one hour of paid leave for every 30 hours worked, up to 48 hours per year, usable as soon as it’s earned. The rule took effect January 1, 2024, and covers most full-time, part-time, temporary, and seasonal workers. You can use the time for your own illness, a family member’s health needs, domestic violence situations, or weather-related closures of your workplace or a family member’s school.

Who Is Covered

You qualify if your employer anticipates you’ll work at least 80 hours in Minnesota over the course of a year for that single employer. The threshold is low on purpose: most part-time and seasonal workers clear it. Industry, job title, and temporary status don’t change the answer.¹

Independent contractors are explicitly excluded. If you’re genuinely self-employed and not misclassified, ESST doesn’t apply.¹

How Your Hours Add Up

You earn one hour of ESST for every 30 hours worked, starting on your first day. The annual accrual cap is 48 hours, though your employer can set it higher. Salaried employees exempt from overtime are treated as working 40 hours a week for accrual, unless their normal schedule is shorter.²

Your employer picks the tracking period: calendar year, fiscal year, or your hire anniversary. Whatever they choose, unused hours carry over into the next period. Your total accrued balance can reach 80 hours at any point, so it’s possible to build up more than a year’s worth of leave over time.²

Front-Loaded Alternatives

Some employers skip accrual tracking and front-load hours instead. They can either give you 48 hours at the start of each year and pay out any unused hours at year’s end, or give you 80 hours up front with no payout and no carryover. Either way, the full amount has to be available for use on day one of the period.³

When You Can Start Using It

There’s no waiting period. If you work 30 hours in your first week, you have one hour of paid leave available that same week.²

The smallest increment your employer can require is the smallest unit your payroll system tracks, and never more than four hours. If your payroll runs in 15-minute increments, you can take 15 minutes of ESST for a quick appointment.⁴

What You Can Use ESST For

Qualifying reasons fall into three broad categories.

Sick Time

Your own physical or mental health needs: treatment, recovery, preventive care like annual checkups and dental appointments, and diagnosis of a new condition. The same applies when you’re caring for a family member.²

Safe Time

If you or a family member has experienced domestic abuse, sexual assault, or stalking, you can use ESST to seek legal help, move to a safe living situation, or get counseling from a victim services organization.²

Closures

ESST covers absences caused by weather or public emergency closures of your workplace, or of a family member’s school or care facility. If your child’s school cancels classes because of a blizzard and you can’t get to work, that qualifies.²

Who Counts as Family

The definition is unusually broad. It includes:

Children: biological, adopted, foster, stepchildren, legal wards, and children you act as a parent to (including adult children)
Parents: biological, adoptive, foster, stepparents, and anyone who acted as your parent when you were a minor
Spouse or registered domestic partner
Siblings, including stepsiblings and foster siblings
Grandparents and grandchildren, including step relationships
Nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles, children-in-law, and siblings-in-law
All of the above relationships on your spouse’s or domestic partner’s side
Anyone related by blood or whose relationship with you is the equivalent of a family bond
One additional designated person you can name each year

The designated-person option lets you pick one individual annually who doesn’t fit any other category.¹

How ESST Is Paid

You receive your base hourly rate. Salaried workers get whatever they’d normally earn had they not taken leave. If you hold multiple positions with different rates for the same employer, you’re paid the rate that would have applied during the specific hours you missed.³

The base rate excludes commissions, shift differentials, overtime pay, weekend or holiday premiums, bonuses, and tips. Tipped workers receive their base hourly rate but not the tips they would have earned. Workers paid entirely on commission or piecework must be paid at least the applicable minimum wage (local, state, or federal, whichever is highest).³

ESST pay is treated as regular wages for tax purposes, with federal income tax, Social Security (6.2%), and Medicare (1.45%) withheld as usual.

Requesting Leave and Providing Documentation

For planned absences like a scheduled surgery or dental appointment, your employer can require up to seven days’ advance notice. For unexpected illness or emergencies, give notice as soon as you reasonably can. Your employer must have a written policy explaining how to report absences, and if they never gave you that policy, they can’t deny leave for failing to follow it.⁵

Documentation can be requested only when you’re out for more than three consecutive days. For health leave, a healthcare provider’s note confirming the need for leave is enough; it doesn’t need to disclose your diagnosis. For safe-time leave, a police report, court order, or statement from a victim advocate satisfies the requirement. Any documentation your employer collects must be kept confidential and stored separately from your main personnel file.³

What Happens When You Leave the Job

Minnesota does not require employers to pay out unused ESST when you quit, are laid off, or are fired. Your employer can choose to pay it out, but they don’t have to. If you’re sitting on a large balance and thinking about a job change, use it before you go or accept that you’ll lose it.

If the same employer rehires you within 180 days, your previously accrued hours must be reinstated. That rule prevents employers from cycling workers out and back to reset balances.³

How ESST Interacts With PTO and FMLA

An existing paid time off policy can satisfy ESST if it’s at least as generous. That means accruing at the same rate or faster, covering all the same qualifying reasons, and following the same usage and carryover rules. Employers don’t need to create a separate ESST bucket when their existing policy already meets or exceeds the law.³

For workers who qualify for federal Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) protections, ESST and FMLA can run concurrently. FMLA only guarantees unpaid leave, but your employer can require, or you can choose, to use ESST during an FMLA absence. That way you get both the pay and the job protection.⁶

One boundary worth knowing: Minneapolis and St. Paul still have their own local ESST ordinances, now aligned with state law. If you work in either city, you’re covered by both and entitled to whichever provides the better benefit. Bloomington and Duluth repealed their local ordinances after the state law took effect.⁷⁸⁹

Protection From Retaliation

Your employer cannot fire, discipline, demote, or otherwise penalize you for requesting or using ESST, filing a complaint, or participating in an investigation. Attendance point systems that count ESST absences against you are specifically prohibited. If your employer’s attendance policy treats a legitimate sick day as an unexcused absence, that policy violates state law.³

The law also makes it illegal for an employer to threaten to report your immigration status, or a family member’s, in response to you exercising ESST rights. You don’t have to cite the statute by name; asserting your right to paid sick leave is enough to trigger protection.

What to Do if Your Employer Violates the Law

Your pay stub should show the ESST hours you used during the pay period and the hours available going forward. If that information isn’t there, if you were denied leave you had earned, or if you were disciplined for using it, your employer is out of compliance.⁵

You have two routes. You can file a complaint with the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry, which is free and doesn’t require an attorney, or you can bring a civil lawsuit on your own. An employer that fails to provide or allow ESST use owes the affected employee the hours they should have received plus an equal amount in liquidated damages.³

1
Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes. Minnesota Code 181.9445 – Definitions
2
Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry. Earned Sick and Safe Time (ESST)
3
Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry. FAQs: Earned Sick and Safe Time (ESST)
4
Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry. Earned Sick and Safe Time (ESST) Employer Checklist
5
Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry. Earned Sick and Safe Time Employee Notice
6
U.S. Department of Labor. FMLA Frequently Asked Questions
7
City of Minneapolis. Sick and Safe Time
8
City of Saint Paul. Earned Sick and Safe Time
9
City of Bloomington MN. Earned Sick and Safe Time (ESST)