Minnesota Paid Sick Leave Law: Accrual, Use, and Employer Duties

Under Minnesota’s paid sick leave law, known as Earned Sick and Safe Time (ESST), almost every employee in the state earns one hour of paid leave for every 30 hours worked, up to 48 hours a year. The rules took effect January 1, 2024. Accrual starts on your first day, and there is no waiting period before you can use the hours.¹

Who Is Covered

You qualify if you work at least 80 hours in a year for an employer in Minnesota. That threshold picks up part-time, seasonal, and temporary workers alongside full-time staff. Accrual begins the day you start work, even before you hit 80 hours.²

The law defines an employer as any person or entity with one or more employees. Corporations, nonprofits, partnerships, and state and local government are all in. A sole proprietor with one part-time worker must comply. Independent contractors are not covered, and certain airline flight crew members who work less than a majority of their hours in Minnesota and already receive equivalent paid leave under a collective bargaining agreement are excluded.³

How Hours Accrue

You earn one hour of ESST for every 30 hours worked. The annual cap is 48 hours unless your employer voluntarily allows more. A full-time worker at 40 hours a week will hit 48 hours somewhere around week 36.¹

Unused hours carry over into the next year, but your total accrued bank cannot exceed 80 hours at any point unless your employer sets a higher limit. Employers can skip hour-by-hour tracking by front-loading. An employer that pays out unused ESST at year-end can front-load 48 hours for the following year; an employer that doesn’t pay out unused time must front-load at least 80 hours.⁴

Hours become usable the moment they accrue. No probationary period, no minimum tenure.⁵

What You Can Use ESST For

The law splits into two sides. Sick time covers your own physical or mental illness, injury, or health condition, including doctor visits, preventive care, and diagnosis. It also covers caring for a family member with any of those same needs.⁶

Safe time covers absences tied to domestic abuse, sexual assault, or stalking affecting you or a family member. That includes seeking legal help, relocating or securing housing, attending court proceedings, or accessing services from a victim advocacy organization.⁶

You can also use ESST when your workplace closes due to weather or a public emergency, or when a family member’s school or care facility closes for the same reason.⁶

Who Counts as Family

The definition of family member is unusually broad. Covered relationships include:

Children, including biological, adopted, foster, stepchildren, legal wards, and any child you stand in loco parentis to (adult children included)
Spouse or registered domestic partner
Siblings, including stepsiblings and foster siblings
Parents, including biological, adoptive, foster, stepparents, and anyone who acted as a parent when you were a minor
Grandchildren and grandparents, including step-grandchildren and step-grandparents
Nieces, nephews, aunts, and uncles
Children-in-law and siblings-in-law
All of the above categories on your spouse’s or domestic partner’s side
Anyone related by blood or whose close association is the equivalent of a family relationship
One additional individual you designate each year

That last item is the flexible piece. If a close friend has no one else, you can name them once a year and use ESST to care for them.²

What You Get Paid

ESST is paid at your base rate. For hourly workers, that is the rate you would have earned on the shift you missed; if you work at different rates for different tasks, you get the rate that applied to that shift. Salaried employees receive the same pay they’d have received without the absence. Workers paid only on commission or piecework receive at least the applicable minimum wage, whichever of the local, state, or federal figures is highest.⁵

Notice and Documentation

When you know in advance you’ll need ESST, your employer can require up to seven days of advance notice. For a sudden illness or emergency, you notify your employer as soon as practicable. Employers can set their own notification procedures in a written policy, but those procedures cannot be so burdensome that they effectively discourage you from using your time.⁷

Your employer can ask for documentation only if you miss more than three consecutive scheduled workdays. Reasonable documentation for a health absence means a note from a health care provider. For safe-time absences, a written statement from you or a support advocate is enough. Employers cannot require you to disclose the specific details of your medical condition or the circumstances of domestic abuse, and personal information tied to ESST must be kept confidential and stored separately from your main personnel file.⁶

What Your Employer Must Show and Track

Every employer must give each employee a written notice explaining their ESST rights, in English and, if applicable, in the employee’s primary language if it is one identified by the state. The Department of Labor and Industry publishes a sample notice.¹

Every pay stub or earnings statement must show your total ESST hours available and the hours used during that pay period. Employers must keep accrual and usage records for at least three years. If those records are missing and a dispute arises over hours earned, the employer is at a serious disadvantage.⁶

Retaliation and Denied Leave

Employers cannot retaliate against a worker for requesting or using ESST, filing a complaint, or cooperating with an investigation. Retaliation includes firing, demotion, and discipline as well as cutting hours, changing schedules, excluding someone from meetings, or making threats related to immigration status.⁸

An employer that fails to provide ESST or blocks its use owes you the full value of the denied leave plus an equal amount in liquidated damages. When the exact hours owed are unclear, the employer is liable for 48 hours per year that ESST was not provided, again plus an equal amount in liquidated damages. Discouraging an employee from using earned time counts as interference on its own, even if no request was formally denied.⁵

Leaving a Job or Business Sale

The law does not require employers to pay out unused ESST when you quit, retire, or are terminated. Your accrued balance expires unless your employer’s own policy says otherwise. That is a meaningful difference from vacation pay, which some employers are contractually obligated to pay out.

A business sale is different. If your employer is bought out or replaced by a successor and you stay on, you keep every accrued hour, and the new employer inherits your balance in full. Even if the original employer terminates you during the transition, your accrued ESST transfers to the successor as long as it hires you within 30 days of the changeover.⁹

Minneapolis and St. Paul

Both Minneapolis and St. Paul enacted their own sick and safe time ordinances before the state law took effect, and those local ordinances still exist. Where the local and state requirements differ, employers must follow whichever rule is more favorable to the employee. If you work in either city, check the local ordinance alongside the state rules; the state law now covers much of the same ground, but details in the ordinances can be more generous.¹

How to File a Complaint

If your employer violates the law, you have two paths. You can file a complaint with the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry, which enforces ESST, or bring a civil lawsuit on your own. You are not required to try one before the other.⁵

Keep your pay stubs and any written communications about denied leave. If your employer failed to include ESST balances on your earnings statements, that record-keeping failure strengthens your case.

Changes Coming in 2026

The Minnesota Legislature moved several amendments to ESST during the 2025 session through SF 2300, with changes set to take effect January 1, 2026. The documentation threshold would drop from three consecutive workdays to two, meaning employers could request a doctor’s note sooner. The bill would also redefine “employer” to cover only businesses with four or more employees, exempting the smallest employers. Other provisions would add farm worker exclusions, let employers with more generous leave policies apply ESST rules to only the first 160 hours of leave, and allow employees to trade shifts voluntarily rather than use ESST.¹⁰

Check the Department of Labor and Industry’s ESST page for the current version of the rules before relying on any specific figure.

1
Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry. Earned Sick and Safe Time (ESST)
2
Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes. Minnesota Code 181.9445 – Definitions
3
Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes. Minnesota Code 181.9445 – Definitions
4
Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes. Minnesota Code 181.9446 – Accrual of Earned Sick and Safe Time
5
Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry. FAQs: Earned Sick and Safe Time (ESST)
6
Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes. Minnesota Code 181.9447 – Use of Earned Sick and Safe Time
7
Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry. Earned Sick and Safe Time Employee Notice
8
Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry. Retaliation
9
Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes. Minnesota Code 181.9448 – Employer Obligations
10
Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes. SF 2300 2nd Engrossment – 94th Legislature (2025 – 2026)