New York Sick Leave Law: Section 196-b Accrual and Use Rules

The New York sick leave law, codified at Labor Law Section 196-b, requires every private-sector employer in the state to provide sick leave each calendar year. How much, and whether it has to be paid, depends on the size of the business and in some cases its net income. The law covers all private-sector workers regardless of industry, occupation, part-time status, or overtime exemption.¹

How Much Sick Leave You Get

Section 196-b sorts employers into four tiers:²

Four or fewer employees with net income of $1 million or less in the previous tax year: up to 40 hours of unpaid sick leave per calendar year.
Four or fewer employees with net income over $1 million in the previous tax year: up to 40 hours of paid sick leave per calendar year.
Five to 99 employees: up to 40 hours of paid sick leave per calendar year, regardless of income.
100 or more employees: up to 56 hours of paid sick leave per calendar year.

Headcount is measured by the number of employees in any calendar year, not full-time equivalents. Businesses that swell past 99 workers during busy seasons can land in the 56-hour tier without realizing it.

When Leave Accrues and What Carries Over

Employees begin accruing sick leave from their first day on the job at a rate of at least one hour for every 30 hours worked.¹ There is no waiting period before accrual starts. An employer may, however, delay actual use until after the first calendar year of employment or a set number of days have passed, depending on policy.

Employers who would rather skip ongoing accrual math can front-load the full annual amount at the start of the calendar year. The catch: once front-loaded, the hours cannot be reduced or revoked later based on how much the employee actually worked.² If you grant 40 hours on January 1 and the employee works far fewer hours than expected, the full 40 hours still belong to them.

Unused sick leave carries over into the following calendar year. Employers can still cap actual usage in any single year at the statutory maximum for their tier: 40 hours for employers with fewer than 100 employees, 56 hours for employers with 100 or more.² Carryover protects workers who stayed healthy one year and face a longer absence the next.

How Paid Sick Leave Is Calculated

Paid sick leave must be compensated at the employee’s regular rate of pay or the applicable minimum wage, whichever is greater.² For most hourly and salaried workers that calculation is straightforward.

Employers may set a minimum increment for using leave, but the increment cannot exceed four hours. You can require that leave be taken in blocks of up to four hours rather than one-hour pieces, but you cannot force a worker to burn an entire day for a short absence.

What You Can Use Sick Leave For

The law covers two broad categories: health-related absences and safe leave.

Health leave covers an employee’s own physical or mental illness, injury, or health condition, as well as diagnosis, treatment, and preventive care like checkups and vaccinations. The same protections apply when the employee is caring for a family member with similar needs.¹

The statute’s definition of family is deliberately wide. It includes children, spouses, domestic partners, parents, siblings, grandparents, grandchildren, and the child or parent of an employee’s spouse or domestic partner. Employers sometimes resist leave used to care for a sibling or grandparent and don’t realize those relationships are explicitly covered.

Safe leave applies when the employee or a family member is a victim of domestic violence, a family offense, a sexual offense, stalking, or human trafficking.² It can be used for things like obtaining services from a domestic violence shelter, attending court proceedings, relocating for safety, or meeting with an attorney.

What an Employer Can and Cannot Ask For

Section 196-b prohibits requiring employees to disclose confidential information about a mental or physical illness, injury, or health condition as a condition of granting sick leave. The same prohibition applies to information about domestic violence, sexual offenses, stalking, or human trafficking when the leave qualifies as safe leave.²

In practice, an employer cannot demand a diagnosis, the name of a treating physician, or details about the nature of the condition before approving a sick day. Employers accustomed to requiring detailed doctor’s notes need to adjust. You can confirm that an absence qualifies under the law. You cannot condition approval on the employee handing over private medical information.

Protection Against Retaliation

Section 196-b bars employers from firing, threatening, penalizing, or retaliating against any employee for requesting or using sick leave.² The anti-retaliation provision ties into Section 215 of the Labor Law, which carries its own penalties.

Retaliation is not limited to termination. Cutting hours, reassigning the worker to less desirable shifts, issuing unwarranted disciplinary write-ups, or creating a hostile environment after a leave request can all qualify. A pattern of adverse treatment following a sick leave request exposes the employer to significant liability under Section 215.

Record-Keeping and Balance Requests

Employers must keep payroll records for at least six years tracking the amount of sick leave accrued and used by each employee on a weekly basis.¹ State officials can inspect these records.

When an employee asks for a summary of their sick leave balance, the employer has three business days to provide a statement showing leave accrued and used in the current calendar year or any previous calendar year.² Missing the deadline is itself a violation.

Penalties for Violations

The teeth of the law sit in Section 215. If the Commissioner of Labor finds a violation, the civil penalty runs from $1,000 to $10,000. For an employer with a prior violation in the preceding six years, the range increases to $1,000 to $20,000.³

Beyond fines, the Commissioner can order reinstatement to the former or an equivalent position, lost wages, front pay in lieu of reinstatement, and liquidated damages of up to $20,000 per affected employee. These remedies stack, so a single violation affecting multiple workers can get expensive fast.

Employees can also sue on their own within two years of the violation. A private lawsuit can produce the same relief plus attorneys’ fees and costs. Willful violations of the anti-retaliation provision are a Class B misdemeanor and can carry criminal prosecution.³

How It Fits With FMLA, Union Contracts, and Existing PTO

For employers with 50 or more employees, the federal Family and Medical Leave Act often overlaps with state sick leave. Under the FMLA, an employer may require an employee to substitute accrued paid sick leave for otherwise unpaid FMLA leave, and the employee can elect the same. When that happens, both entitlements run concurrently rather than back to back.⁴ An employee using Section 196-b leave for an FMLA-qualifying reason may be drawing from both entitlements at once.

A collective bargaining agreement can provide a comparable benefit in place of the statutory leave, whether through paid days off, other compensation, or a combination. The agreement must specifically acknowledge the provisions of Section 196-b.² A generic PTO policy referenced in a CBA that never mentions the statute will not satisfy the requirement.

If an existing leave policy already meets or exceeds Section 196-b’s accrual, carryover, and usage standards, the law imposes no additional obligations.¹ Many employers with generous PTO plans already comply without changes. The comparison needs to cover all three elements: accrual rate, carryover rules, and permitted uses.

Unused Sick Leave at Separation

Section 196-b does not require employers to pay out unused sick leave when an employee resigns, is terminated, retires, or otherwise separates.² That is a meaningful distinction from vacation or PTO, which in some cases must be paid out under New York wage law. If an internal policy bundles sick leave into a broader PTO bank that promises payout on departure, that promise may create a separate obligation, but the statute itself does not.

New York City Employers Have Extra Obligations

Businesses operating in New York City are also subject to the city’s Paid Safe and Sick Leave law, which predates Section 196-b and includes provisions that go beyond it, including additional unpaid protected time off. NYC employers must comply with whichever law provides greater benefits to the employee on each specific point. Relying only on the state analysis without reviewing the city rules can leave gaps.

1
New York State. New York Paid Sick Leave
2
New York State Senate. New York Code LAB 196-B – Sick Leave Requirements
3
New York State Senate. New York Code LAB 215 – Retaliation
4
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 USC 2612 – Leave Requirement