New York Sick Leave Law: Accrual, Uses, and Pay

The New York sick leave law, found at Labor Law Section 196-b, requires every private-sector employer in the state to provide sick leave to employees. You earn at least one hour of leave for every 30 hours you work, starting on your first day, and your annual cap is either 40 or 56 hours depending on how many people your employer has on the payroll.¹ Part-time workers, overtime-exempt workers, and employees in every private industry are covered. Federal, state, and local government workers are not.²

How Much Leave You Get

Your annual entitlement depends on the size of your employer, and for the smallest businesses, on last year’s net income:

1 to 4 employees with net income of $1 million or less: up to 40 hours of unpaid sick leave per calendar year.
1 to 4 employees with net income over $1 million: up to 40 hours of paid sick leave per calendar year.
5 to 99 employees: up to 40 hours of paid sick leave per calendar year.
100 or more employees: up to 56 hours of paid sick leave per calendar year.

Employer size is based on the total headcount during the calendar year.¹

How You Earn and Keep It

Accrual runs at a minimum of one hour of sick leave for every 30 hours worked, starting from your first day on the job.¹ A standard 40-hour week builds roughly 1.33 hours of sick leave.

Your employer can skip the hour-by-hour math and front-load the full year’s balance on day one of each calendar year. If it does, it cannot claw back any of that time later based on how many hours you actually worked.²

Unused leave carries over into the next calendar year, so what you’ve accrued doesn’t vanish on January 1. The employer can still cap how much you actually use in a year at the statutory maximum for its tier. A mid-sized employer, for instance, can let you carry over 30 unused hours into the new year but still limit total usage that year to 40 hours.² Any usage cap has to be in writing and either posted at the workplace or handed to employees.

One point that trips people up: New York does not require your employer to pay out unused sick leave when you quit, get fired, or retire.¹ Your balance has no cash value at separation unless the employer’s own policy promises one.

What You Can Use Leave For

The law covers two broad categories: health needs and safety needs. You can use the time for yourself or a covered family member.

Health Reasons

Any mental or physical illness, injury, or health condition qualifies, whether or not it has been diagnosed. Preventive care counts too, including routine checkups, vaccinations, and screenings where nothing is wrong at the time of the visit.¹ The same list applies when a family member needs care or help getting to an appointment.

Family under the law means your spouse, domestic partner, child, parent, sibling, grandchild, and grandparent, plus the child or parent of your spouse or domestic partner. “Parent” is read broadly to include biological, foster, step-, and adoptive parents, legal guardians, and anyone who stood in a parental role when you were a minor.¹

Safe Leave

The same bank of hours can be used as “safe leave” when you or a family member has been a victim of domestic violence, a family offense, a sexual offense, stalking, or human trafficking. Covered activities include getting services from a shelter or crisis center, meeting with an attorney, filing a police report, relocating, enrolling children in a new school, and other steps to protect yourself or a family member.¹

How to Request Leave

You can ask for sick leave verbally or in writing. Your employer should have a written policy, either distributed to employees or posted somewhere visible at the workplace.²

Privacy rules here are strong. Your employer cannot require you to reveal a specific diagnosis or share confidential medical details to get leave approved. For absences of three consecutive workdays or fewer, your own statement that the leave is for a qualifying reason is all the employer can demand. If you’re out longer than that, the employer may request documentation from a health care provider, but it has to reimburse any out-of-pocket cost of getting it.¹

Employers can set a minimum increment for using leave, but it can’t be more than four hours. Many allow smaller blocks, down to an hour or even 15 minutes.²

Checking Your Balance

Your accrued and used sick leave has to appear on your pay stub or on a separate document provided with each pay statement. If that information isn’t there, you can request a written summary of your balance and usage, and the employer must respond within three business days.² Catch discrepancies early. They are much easier to fix close to the pay period in question than months later.

What You’re Paid During Leave

Paid sick leave has to be compensated at your normal hourly rate or the applicable minimum wage, whichever is higher.² If different tasks or shifts pay different rates, your sick-leave pay should match what you would have earned during the hours you missed. An employer cannot pay a lower rate just because the hours came out of sick leave rather than being worked. Short-paying sick leave is a wage violation and can trigger a claim for unpaid wages and liquidated damages.

Retaliation Is Illegal

Your employer cannot discipline, threaten, demote, or fire you for requesting or using sick leave. When you return, you have the right to the same position, pay, and employment terms you had before.² Counting a sick-leave absence against you under an attendance-based discipline system is itself retaliation.

Labor Law Section 215 sets the consequences. An employer found to have retaliated faces a civil penalty of $1,000 to $10,000, which rises to $1,000 to $20,000 for a repeat violation within the previous six years. The state can also order reinstatement, back pay, and liquidated damages of up to $20,000. You can bring your own lawsuit within two years, and a court can award the same remedies plus reasonable attorney’s fees and costs.³

If You’re in a Union

A collective bargaining agreement entered into after September 30, 2020 can displace the standard sick leave rules, but only if it does two things. It has to provide comparable benefits or paid days off, and it has to specifically reference Labor Law Section 196-b by name.²

The Department of Labor treats leave with fewer restrictions on its use as “comparable” regardless of what the leave is called. Vacation time, personal days, and annual leave can all count if they can be used for the same purposes the statute allows, and multiple categories can be combined to clear the bar. Without the explicit reference to Section 196-b, though, the waiver fails and you keep the full statutory benefit.²

If You Work in New York City

New York City has its own protected time off law, administered by the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, that predates and overlaps with the state law. If you work in the five boroughs, both laws apply, and your employer has to follow whichever standard is more generous to you on any given question. For city-specific guidance, consult the DCWP directly.

How to File a Complaint

If your employer refuses to provide sick leave, retaliates against you for using it, or violates any other part of the law, contact the New York Department of Labor’s Anti-Retaliation Unit at 888-52-LABOR (888-525-2267) or by email at LSAsk@labor.ny.gov.² You can also file a private lawsuit, which has to be brought within two years of the violation.³ Keep records: save emails, screenshot your pay stubs, and write down the dates and times you requested or were denied leave. A clear paper trail is often the difference between a complaint that goes nowhere and one that gets you reinstated and paid.

1
New York State Senate. New York Labor Code LAB 196-B – Sick Leave Requirements
2
New York State. New York Paid Sick Leave
3
New York State Senate. New York Labor Code LAB 215 – Retaliation