MN PFML: Eligibility, Benefit Amounts, and Filing a Claim

Minnesota’s Paid Family and Medical Leave program starts paying benefits on January 1, 2026. It replaces part of your wages when you need time off for your own serious health condition, a new child, a family member’s illness, safety concerns from domestic abuse, or military family logistics. Nearly every worker in the state is covered, benefits max out at $1,423 per week, and the program is paid for by a 0.88% payroll premium split evenly between you and your employer.

When It Starts and Who Is Covered

Benefits become available January 1, 2026. If you work for a Minnesota employer and at least half your work time during the year is in Minnesota, you’re almost certainly covered. The law sweeps broadly across private and public employers regardless of size.¹

A few groups sit outside the program. Federal employees are covered by separate federal programs. Seasonal employees are excluded from the definition of covered employment. Self-employed individuals and independent contractors don’t pay in by default, but they can voluntarily opt in by applying to the commissioner; if they do, they pay the full 0.88% themselves because there is no employer to share the cost.¹

What You Can Take Leave For

The program covers six categories of leave:

Your own serious health condition that prevents you from doing your job.
Pregnancy-related medical care, including prenatal appointments, complications, and recovery from childbirth.
Bonding with a new biological, adopted, or foster child, available within 12 months of birth or placement.²
Caring for a family member with a serious health condition.
Safety leave to address domestic abuse, sexual assault, or stalking, including seeking legal help or relocating.²
Qualifying exigency, meaning handling logistics when a family member is called to active military duty.

Minnesota’s definition of “family member” is broader than the federal FMLA, reaching parents-in-law and other relationships federal leave doesn’t cover. That matters if you’re taking leave for someone FMLA wouldn’t recognize.

How Many Weeks and How Much Money

You can receive up to 12 weeks per year for your own serious health condition and up to 12 weeks per year for family-related leave (bonding, family care, safety leave, or qualifying exigency). If you need both types in the same benefit year, the combined maximum is 20 weeks, not 24. Taking 12 weeks of one type leaves you with up to 8 weeks of the other.³

Your weekly benefit is built on a three-tier formula tied to the state average weekly wage, which is $1,423 for 2026. That figure is also the maximum weekly benefit.⁴

90% of your wages up to 50% of the state average weekly wage (about the first $711).
66% of your wages between 50% and 100% of the state average weekly wage.
55% of your wages above 100% of the state average weekly wage, up to the $1,423 cap.⁴

The tiers stack, so lower earners replace a larger share of income while higher earners still get meaningful payments up to the cap. Most middle-income workers land somewhere between 70% and 80% wage replacement.

Qualifying for Benefits

To open a benefit account, you need wage credits of at least 5.3% of the state’s average annual wage, rounded down to the nearest $100.⁴ With the current state average weekly wage of $1,423, that annualizes to roughly $74,000, putting the minimum threshold at about $3,900 earned during your base period. The base period is generally the first four of the last five completed calendar quarters before you file.

For every leave type except bonding, your need for leave must last at least seven calendar days. This is not an unpaid waiting week. The statute calls it a “retroactively payable period,” so you’ll be paid for those first seven days once your claim is approved. Bonding leave has no seven-day requirement.³²

Filing a Claim

If your leave is foreseeable, give your employer at least 30 days’ notice. If a medical emergency or change in circumstances makes that impractical, give notice as soon as you can. You only need to notify the employer once for a given leave event, though you should tell them if your dates change.³

Claims are filed through the state portal at pl.mn.gov. Minnesota Paid Leave has modeled its certification forms on the federal FMLA forms and will accept FMLA forms as valid certification.⁵

What you’ll need depends on why you’re taking leave:

Medical or family care leave: a healthcare provider completes a certification form covering the start date, expected length, medical facts, and which essential job functions are affected.⁵
Bonding leave: a certified birth certificate, hospital discharge document, or adoption or foster placement paperwork showing the child’s name, date of birth, and the names of the parents taking leave.⁵
Safety leave: a signed safety leave certification form or a court document such as an order for protection, harassment restraining order, or domestic abuse no-contact order. Healthcare providers, domestic abuse advocates, victim advocates, judges, and law enforcement officers can all certify this.⁵
Qualifying exigency: a copy of the family member’s active-duty orders or other documentation from the U.S. armed forces.²

Once your claim is processed, payments typically arrive within three to five business days and then follow a weekly schedule. The retroactive payment for the initial seven-day qualifying event is included in the first benefit payment.³

Taking Leave Intermittently

You don’t have to take leave in one continuous block. Intermittent leave is permitted for a serious health condition when it’s reasonable and appropriate to your medical needs, and for the other leave types as well.³

The minimum increment is one calendar day, and you can’t submit a payment request until you’ve accumulated at least eight hours of leave time, unless more than 30 days have passed since the start of your leave. Your weekly benefit is prorated to the days actually taken. Employers are not required to provide more than 480 hours of intermittent leave in a 12-month period. If you hit that ceiling, you can still take your remaining leave continuously.³

Your Job and Health Insurance While You’re Out

When you come back from leave, your employer must restore you to the same position you held before or an equivalent one with the same pay, benefits, and working conditions. Equivalent means virtually identical duties, responsibilities, skill level, and authority. Your employer cannot pressure you into accepting a different role.⁶

Reinstatement rights kick in after 90 calendar days from your date of hire, a lower bar than the 12-month and 1,250-hour requirements under federal FMLA.⁶ Newer employees who wouldn’t qualify under FMLA still get protection here.

There is one main exception. If your position would have been eliminated regardless of your leave, through a layoff or business closure for example, the employer isn’t required to reinstate you. The burden is on the employer to prove you would have lost the job anyway.³

Your group health insurance continues while you’re on leave as if you were still working. You keep paying your usual employee share of premiums, and the employer cannot drop your coverage or change your plan terms because you’re on leave. Dependents on your plan are covered too.³

Employers cannot fire, discipline, demote, or otherwise retaliate against you for requesting or using paid leave. The commissioner can impose penalties of $1,000 to $10,000 per violation, paid directly to you, scaled to the size of the business and the seriousness of the violation.⁶ Subtle discouragement or hints that your role could be at risk likely crosses the line into retaliation.

What It Costs You

The total premium for 2026 is 0.88% of your wages, split evenly with your employer at 0.44% each. Your employer withholds your share from each paycheck and remits both portions to the state. Premiums apply to wages up to the Social Security OASDI cap, which is $176,100 in 2025 and adjusts annually. Wages above that ceiling are not subject to premiums.³

How It Interacts With FMLA, Workers’ Comp, and PTO

If your leave qualifies under both Minnesota PFML and federal FMLA, your employer can require the two to run at the same time. When they run concurrently, you use up weeks from both banks at once rather than back to back. Because Minnesota’s law covers some situations FMLA doesn’t, like caring for a parent-in-law, leave taken for a state-only reason leaves your FMLA time untouched and available later in the year for a separate qualifying event.

Workers’ compensation cuts against PFML. If your workers’ comp payments are equal to or greater than your weekly PFML benefit, you can’t collect PFML for that period. If workers’ comp is lower, the state benefit is reduced by the workers’ comp amount so you don’t double-collect.²

You can use accrued vacation, sick time, or PTO in place of PFML benefits for any eligible leave period, and you keep the statute’s job protections while doing so. Your employer may also offer supplemental pay on top of PFML benefits, but the combined total cannot exceed your usual salary. Accepting supplemental pay is your choice.²

Taxes on Benefits

PFML benefits are taxable at both the federal and state level. Minnesota Paid Leave offers optional withholding of 10% for federal taxes and 5% for state taxes.⁷ If you don’t elect withholding, you’ll owe taxes on the full benefit amount when you file. The flat withholding percentages may not match your actual bracket, so budget accordingly if your income is higher.

If Your Employer Uses a Private Plan

Employers can apply to substitute a private plan for the state program, but the plan must be at least as generous in every respect. It has to cover all employees, provide weekly benefits at least equal to the state formula, offer the same number of weeks, charge employees no more than the state premium share, and carry all the same job protections and reinstatement rights.⁸

If your employer uses an approved private plan, you file with the private insurer instead of the state, but the benefits and protections cannot be any worse than the public program. Coverage continues for former employees until they’re hired elsewhere or 26 weeks pass, whichever comes first.⁸

1
Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes. Minnesota Code 268B.01 – Definitions
2
Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes. Minnesota Code 268B.06 – Eligibility Requirements
3
Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes. Minnesota Code 268B – Family and Medical Benefits
4
Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes. Minnesota Code 268B.04 – Benefit Account Requirements
5
Minnesota Paid Leave. Providers and Certifiers
6
Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes. Minnesota Code 268B.09 – Employment Protections
7
Minnesota Paid Leave. Taxes and Paid Leave
8
Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes. Minnesota Code 268B.10 – Substitution of a Private Plan