Nebraska Paid Sick Leave: Who’s Covered, Accrual, and Use

Nebraska’s paid sick leave law takes effect October 1, 2025, and it covers nearly every employee working in the state. You earn one hour of paid sick time for every 30 hours you work, up to 40 hours a year if your employer has fewer than 20 employees and up to 56 hours a year if it has 20 or more.¹ You can use that time for your own illness, a family member’s illness, medical appointments, preventive care, or certain public health closures.

Who Is Covered

The law reaches full-time, part-time, and temporary employees who work in Nebraska. Independent contractors are not covered and do not earn sick time under the act.² Workers who log fewer than 80 hours in a calendar year are also excluded.

Employer size sets your annual cap and nothing else. A small business is one with fewer than 20 employees during any given week; every other employer falls into the larger tier.¹

How You Earn Sick Time

Accrual doesn’t begin on day one. You start earning after 80 hours of consecutive employment with the same employer, and the rate from that point is one hour for every 30 hours worked.¹ Once time is on the books you can use it right away. There’s no separate waiting period after the 80-hour threshold.

Salaried employees who are exempt from federal overtime rules are presumed to work 40 hours per week for accrual. If your typical schedule is shorter, accrual tracks that shorter schedule instead.¹

Your employer can skip the per-hour tracking by frontloading. That means providing the full expected annual allotment at the start of the year, available immediately.¹

What You Can Use It For

You can use sick time for your own physical or mental health, including illness, injury, medical appointments, and preventive care like checkups or vaccinations. The law sets no severity threshold; a common cold counts the same as a hospital visit.

You can also use it to care for a family member with any of those same needs. And if a public official closes your workplace or your child’s school because of a public health emergency, accrued time covers those missed hours.

Who Counts as a Family Member

The definition is broader than many workers expect:

Children, including biological, adopted, foster, step, legal wards, and any child you stand in a parental role toward, regardless of age
Parents, including biological, foster, step, or adoptive, plus legal guardians of you or your spouse
Anyone who stood in a parental role when you or your spouse was a minor
A spouse legally married to you under the laws of any state
Grandparents, grandchildren, and siblings, whether biological, foster, adoptive, or step, of you or your spouse
Anyone related by blood, or whose close association with you is the equivalent of a family relationship

That last category can cover a longtime partner you’re not married to or a close friend with no other support. The Nebraska Department of Labor reviews those situations individually.²

How You Get Paid

Sick time is paid at your regular hourly rate at the time you use it. If you earn commissions, piece rate, or fee-for-service, your employer calculates the hourly rate using the average weekly rate method under Nebraska’s wage payment statutes, divided by 40 hours.²

You can use sick time in one-hour increments, or in smaller blocks if your employer’s payroll system already tracks that way.³ Your employer can’t require you to find a replacement worker as a condition of using it. Each pay period, your employer must give you a statement showing hours available, hours used, and sick time compensation paid so far.

Requesting Leave and Documentation

For a planned absence like a scheduled surgery or dental procedure, give your employer reasonable advance notice. For sudden illness or an emergency, notify your employer as soon as you reasonably can.

Documentation only enters the picture if you’re out for more than three consecutive workdays. A signed note from a health care provider confirming the need for the absence is enough. Your employer can’t demand a specific diagnosis or detailed medical information.

Carryover, Payout, and What Happens If You Leave

Unused sick time carries over automatically into the next year. The annual usage cap still applies, so rolling 20 hours into a new year at a larger employer doesn’t let you use more than 56 total hours that year.¹

Your employer has an alternative. It can pay out your unused hours at year-end and provide the full annual allotment upfront in January, as long as that new-year amount meets the statutory minimum.¹

When you leave a job, the law does not require the employer to pay out unused sick time, whether you quit, are laid off, or are terminated. But if the same employer rehires you within 12 months, any previously accrued time that wasn’t used or paid out must be reinstated, and you can use it immediately while continuing to accrue from your rehire date.¹ If you transfer between divisions or locations of the same company, your accrued balance moves with you.

Retaliation Is Prohibited

Your employer can’t punish you for using sick time or for exercising any right under the act. That includes firing, suspending, demoting, or cutting your hours or pay because you took leave.⁴ Docking points in a no-fault attendance system for a protected absence counts too, so those policies must be adjusted to exclude earned sick leave.

The Nebraska Department of Labor reviews retaliation complaints on an individual basis.²

What If Your Employer Already Offers PTO

An existing PTO policy can satisfy the law if it meets or exceeds the accrual rate, the annual cap, and the permitted uses. The PTO must be usable for all the same health reasons the statute covers. A vacation-only policy wouldn’t qualify even if it offered 56 hours. Employers whose policy already qualifies aren’t required to allow additional carryover beyond what that policy provides.¹

A Bill That Could Narrow the Law

As of mid-2025, the Nebraska Legislature was considering LB 415, which would narrow the law’s scope. The proposal would let employers skip sick leave for workers ages 14 and 15, for temporary and seasonal agricultural workers, and for employees at the smallest businesses with 10 or fewer workers. It would also adjust how leave requests and accrual timing work. The bill had advanced to the final round of debate but had not been signed into law at the time of this writing. Check the Nebraska Department of Labor’s website for the current rules, since the law could look different from what voters originally approved.

1
Nebraska Legislature. Nebraska Revised Statutes 48-3803 – Accrual and Use of Paid Sick Time
2
Nebraska Department of Labor. Paid Sick Time Frequently Asked Questions
3
Nebraska Department of Labor. Paid Sick Time Notice of Employee Rights
4
Nebraska Legislature. Nebraska Revised Statutes 48-3805 – Interference and Retaliation Prohibited