If you work for a private employer in New York, you are entitled to paid sick leave every calendar year under Labor Law Section 196-b. New York paid sick leave gives you between 40 and 56 hours a year depending on how many people your employer has on staff, with the smallest, lowest-earning businesses allowed to make the leave unpaid. You accrue at least one hour of leave for every 30 hours you work, and you can use it for your own health, a family member’s health, or certain safety-related situations.
How Many Hours You Get Each Year
Your annual entitlement depends on your employer’s size and, for the smallest businesses, their net income from the prior tax year:
- 100 or more employees: up to 56 hours of paid sick leave.
- 5 to 99 employees: up to 40 hours of paid sick leave.
- 4 or fewer employees with more than $1 million in net income: up to 40 hours of paid sick leave.
- 4 or fewer employees with $1 million or less in net income: up to 40 hours of unpaid sick leave.
Coverage does not depend on your industry, whether you work part-time, or whether you are classified as exempt from overtime. Every private-sector worker in the state is covered.1New York State Senate. New York Labor Law 196-B – Sick Leave Requirements
What You Can Use Sick Leave For
You can use accrued sick leave for a mental or physical illness, injury, or health condition, whether or not it has been formally diagnosed. Preventive care counts too, so routine checkups, screenings, and diagnostic testing are all valid reasons to take the time.1New York State Senate. New York Labor Law 196-B – Sick Leave Requirements
The same leave covers care for a family member. Under this law, family means your child, spouse, domestic partner, parent, sibling, grandchild, or grandparent, plus the child or parent of your spouse or domestic partner.
Safe Leave
The law also lets you use your hours as “safe leave” if you or a family member has experienced domestic violence, a family offense, a sexual offense, stalking, or human trafficking. Covered activities include getting help from a shelter or crisis center, safety planning, relocating, meeting with an attorney, filing a police report, meeting with a district attorney, enrolling children in a new school, and any other steps needed to protect safety.2New York State. New York State Paid Sick and Safe Leave Fact Sheet
How You Earn and Keep Your Hours
Sick leave accrues at a rate of at least one hour for every 30 hours worked, starting from your first day. Your employer can instead front-load the entire annual allotment at the start of the calendar year, giving you access to all of it immediately.3New York State. New York Paid Sick Leave
Unused hours carry over to the next calendar year. But your employer can still cap how much you actually use in a single year at 56 hours (large employers) or 40 hours (everyone else). Carryover protects your balance; it does not raise the annual use limit.1New York State Senate. New York Labor Law 196-B – Sick Leave Requirements
If your employer front-loads fewer hours than you would have accrued, they must still let you carry over up to 40 unused hours into the next year, on top of the new year’s front-loaded amount.4New York State. New York State Paid Sick Leave FAQ
How to Request Leave
You can make the request verbally or in writing. Most employers have a procedure in an employee handbook or HR portal, and following it avoids unnecessary friction. Your employer can require you to use leave in set increments, but the minimum increment cannot exceed four hours.5New York State. New York State Paid Sick Leave – General Information
For absences shorter than three consecutive scheduled workdays or shifts, your employer cannot ask for any medical documentation. If you miss three or more consecutive scheduled workdays, your employer may ask for an attestation from a licensed medical provider confirming the need for leave, how much time you need, and a return-to-work date. A simple attestation from you is also acceptable. Either way, you do not have to disclose your diagnosis, the nature of the illness, or specifics of a domestic violence or trafficking situation. Your employer also cannot make you pay for obtaining the documentation.3New York State. New York Paid Sick Leave
How You Get Paid and How to Check Your Balance
When you use paid sick leave, you must be paid at your regular hourly rate or the applicable minimum wage, whichever is higher. The pay should appear on the check for the pay period covering the absence.3New York State. New York Paid Sick Leave
You have a right to know your balance. On request, your employer must give you a written summary of how much sick leave you have accrued and used within three business days, covering the current calendar year and any prior year. Tracking your own total is worth the effort, particularly if you accrue rather than receive front-loaded leave, since the running figure rarely shows up clearly on a pay stub.1New York State Senate. New York Labor Law 196-B – Sick Leave Requirements
Paid Prenatal Personal Leave Is Separate
Since January 1, 2025, every private employer in New York must also provide 20 hours of paid prenatal personal leave in any 52-week period. This is separate from regular sick leave and does not count against it. A pregnant employee at a mid-sized employer gets 40 hours of sick leave and 20 hours of prenatal leave.6New York State. New York State Paid Prenatal Leave
Prenatal leave covers physical exams, medical procedures, monitoring, testing, and discussions with a healthcare provider related to the pregnancy. You can take it in hourly increments, and pay is at your regular rate or the applicable minimum wage, whichever is greater.1New York State Senate. New York Labor Law 196-B – Sick Leave Requirements
If Your Employer Retaliates
The law prohibits your employer from firing, threatening, penalizing, disciplining, or otherwise retaliating against you for requesting or using sick leave or prenatal leave. If your hours get cut soon after you call in sick, or you get written up for an absence covered by accrued leave, that may be illegal retaliation. You can file a complaint with the New York State Department of Labor.1New York State Senate. New York Labor Law 196-B – Sick Leave Requirements
What Happens When You Leave the Job
New York does not require employers to pay out unused sick leave when you quit, get fired, retire, or otherwise separate. The statute says so plainly for both regular sick leave and prenatal personal leave. It is also silent on reinstating your balance if you are rehired; some employers do it voluntarily, but there is no requirement. If you are leaving a job with hours on the books, using them before your last day is the only guaranteed way to get value from them.1New York State Senate. New York Labor Law 196-B – Sick Leave Requirements
If You Work in New York City
New York City has its own sick and safe leave law, now called the Protected Time Off law, administered by the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection. It predates the state law and is broader on some points. If you work within the five boroughs, both laws apply, and your employer must follow whichever standard is more generous to you on any given issue. Coverage details, notice rules, and enforcement all differ, so checking the city rules alongside the state ones is worth doing.