California’s paid time off requirements come down to one clear mandate and a set of strong protections layered on top: employers must provide at least five days (40 hours) of paid sick leave a year, and any vacation or PTO an employer chooses to offer becomes vested wages that cannot be taken away. Separate state programs partially replace your wages during family or medical leave, and newer laws require unpaid time off after a death in the family or a reproductive loss. Paid holidays and paid vacation itself are not required.
Paid Sick Leave Is the Only Required PTO
Under the Healthy Workplaces, Healthy Families Act, expanded by Senate Bill 616 effective January 1, 2024, every covered employer must provide at least five days or 40 hours of paid sick leave each year.1Department of Industrial Relations. Healthy Workplace Healthy Family Act of 2014 (AB 1522) Almost every worker qualifies — full-time, part-time, or temporary — as long as you work at least 30 days for the same employer within a year in California. You can start using accrued sick leave after your 90th day on the job.2California Legislative Information. California Labor Code 246
How you earn that time depends on the method your employer chooses:
- Accrual: you earn at least one hour of sick leave for every 30 hours worked. Unused hours carry over into the next year, though employers can cap your total accrued balance at 80 hours.3Department of Industrial Relations. California Paid Sick Leave – Frequently Asked Questions
- Front-loading: the employer grants the full 40 hours at the start of each benefit year. There’s no carryover because you get a fresh allotment.3Department of Industrial Relations. California Paid Sick Leave – Frequently Asked Questions
- Alternative accrual: a custom schedule that must give you at least 24 hours by your 120th day and the full 40 hours by your 200th day of employment.2California Legislative Information. California Labor Code 246
Your available balance must appear on every pay stub or on a separate written notice each payday. If the employer offers unlimited sick leave, the notice can simply say “unlimited.”2California Legislative Information. California Labor Code 246
Who Counts as Family for Sick Leave
You can use paid sick leave for your own health needs or to care for a family member, and California defines that term more broadly than most people expect. Qualifying family members include your children (biological, adopted, foster, stepchildren, or legal wards, regardless of age), parents (including stepparents, foster parents, and parents-in-law), a spouse or registered domestic partner, grandparents, grandchildren, and siblings.
California also lets you name a designated person at the time you request leave. That person doesn’t need to be related to you by blood or marriage. A close friend, a roommate, or an unmarried partner all qualify. Your employer can limit you to one designated person per 12-month period.4LegiScan. California SB 616 – Chaptered
Vacation and PTO Are Vested Wages
California does not require employers to offer paid vacation. But the moment an employer does offer it, the hours become vested wages under Labor Code Section 227.3. Earned vacation is your property, and no employment contract or policy can provide for forfeiting it.5California Legislative Information. California Labor Code 227.3 This is the single most important concept in California PTO law, and the one that catches employers from other states off guard.
The same principle covers consolidated PTO plans that blend vacation and sick leave into one bank. California allows combined plans, but they must satisfy every minimum sick leave requirement for accrual, usage, and qualifying reasons. For time taken for reasons other than sick leave, the vested-wage protections of Labor Code 227.3 apply.3Department of Industrial Relations. California Paid Sick Leave – Frequently Asked Questions In practice, the full balance in a combined plan is usually treated as vacation for payout purposes at separation, because pulling the “sick” hours back out of a shared bucket is nearly impossible.
Caps Yes, Forfeiture No
Because vacation and PTO are vested, “use-it-or-lose-it” policies are illegal in California. The DLSE has stated this explicitly, relying on the California Supreme Court’s holding that vacation pay accrues as it is earned and cannot be forfeited.6Division of Labor Standards Enforcement. Vacation
What employers can do is set a reasonable ceiling on accumulation. Once you hit the cap, you stop earning new hours until you use some of your balance. Nothing you’ve already earned disappears. The meter just pauses. Any cap must be reasonable and clearly communicated in writing; if it functions as disguised forfeiture, the Labor Commissioner won’t enforce it.6Division of Labor Standards Enforcement. Vacation
Final Pay When You Leave
When your employment ends, all earned and unused vacation or PTO must be paid at your final rate. The deadline depends on how you leave:
- Fired or laid off: your final wages, including accrued vacation, are due immediately at the time of discharge.7California Legislative Information. California Labor Code 201
- Resign with at least 72 hours’ notice: final pay is due on your last working day.8California Legislative Information. California Labor Code 202
- Resign without 72 hours’ notice: the employer has 72 hours from the time you quit to deliver your final pay.8California Legislative Information. California Labor Code 202
Stand-alone sick leave that isn’t part of a combined PTO plan does not have to be paid out at separation unless the employer’s own policy says so. Vacation and PTO always do.
If your employer willfully misses these deadlines, your wages continue to accrue at your daily rate for every day the payment is late, up to a maximum of 30 days.9California Legislative Information. California Labor Code 203 For someone earning $250 a day, that’s up to $7,500 stacked on top of the unpaid balance. This is where most wage claims get expensive fast, not from the underlying amount but from the waiting time penalty that grows while the employer stalls.
Paid Family Leave and State Disability Insurance
Two state insurance programs, funded through payroll deductions, replace part of your income when you can’t work. Neither one protects your job by itself. They replace pay, not employment rights.
Paid Family Leave (PFL) provides up to eight weeks of benefits within any 12-month period when you take time off to bond with a new child (within the first year after birth, adoption, or foster placement), care for a seriously ill family member, or handle a qualifying military deployment.10Employment Development Department. Paid Family Leave Benefits and Payments FAQs You don’t have to take all eight weeks at once. The benefit replaces roughly 60% to 70% of your weekly wages depending on income, up to $1,765 per week in 2026.11Employment Development Department. Contribution Rates and Benefit Amounts
State Disability Insurance (SDI) covers you when a non-work-related illness, injury, or pregnancy keeps you off the job. SDI and PFL share the same funding mechanism. In 2026, employees contribute 1.3% of wages, and the maximum weekly benefit is $1,765.11Employment Development Department. Contribution Rates and Benefit Amounts If you’ve been paying into SDI through your paychecks, and most California employees have, you’re likely eligible when you need it.
Job Protection Through CFRA and FMLA
Wage replacement doesn’t help much if you get fired while you’re out. That’s what job-protected leave is for.
The California Family Rights Act (CFRA) provides up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave per year for bonding with a new child, caring for a family member with a serious health condition, or dealing with your own serious health condition. CFRA covers employers with just five or more employees, which makes it far more accessible than the federal version.12California Civil Rights Department. Job-Protected Leave for Employees in California You need 12 months of employment and at least 1,250 hours worked in the prior year to qualify.
The federal Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) offers the same 12 weeks but only applies to employers with 50 or more employees within 75 miles of your worksite.13U.S. Department of Labor. Family and Medical Leave Act If you work for a smaller company, CFRA is likely your only route to job-protected leave. For larger employers, CFRA and FMLA usually run at the same time, so you don’t get 24 weeks total. You get 12 weeks covered by both. The practical move is to pair CFRA or FMLA job protection with PFL or SDI wage replacement, so you keep both your paycheck and your position.
Bereavement and Reproductive Loss Leave
Since January 2023, private employers with five or more employees must provide up to five days of bereavement leave after the death of a spouse, child, parent, sibling, grandparent, grandchild, domestic partner, or parent-in-law. The law does not require this leave to be paid. But your employer must let you use any accrued sick leave, vacation, or PTO during bereavement so you can receive pay.14California Civil Rights Department. Bereavement Leave – AB 1949 FAQ
Employers of the same size must also grant up to five days of leave after a reproductive loss event, which includes miscarriage, stillbirth, failed adoption, failed surrogacy, or unsuccessful assisted reproduction. If you experience more than one qualifying event in a year, you’re entitled to up to 20 days total. You must have worked for the employer for at least 30 days to be eligible.15California Civil Rights Department. Leave from Work After a Reproductive Loss Like bereavement leave, this time off isn’t required to be paid, but you can draw on any paid leave you have.
What California Does Not Require
A few common assumptions are worth clearing up. Neither federal law nor California law requires private employers to provide paid holidays. Whether you get paid for Thanksgiving, Christmas, or any other day the office closes depends entirely on your employer’s policy.16U.S. Department of Labor. Holiday Pay If the office closes on a holiday and you’re a non-exempt hourly employee, you have no automatic right to be paid for that day unless a company policy or contract says otherwise.
There’s also no California requirement for paid vacation itself, only the rule that any vacation an employer offers becomes vested. And when you receive a lump-sum payout for unused vacation or PTO at separation, that money is taxed as regular wages and reported on your W-2. There’s no special tax treatment. It gets added to your final paycheck and is subject to standard income tax withholding, Social Security, and Medicare taxes. A large payout can temporarily push you into a higher withholding bracket for that pay period, which surprises some employees when the check arrives.