A couple of updates on Saturday's post on pending sick leave legislation, the Healthy Families Act...
In the comments, Pino called shenanigans on the numbers I gave for the incidence of paid sick leave benefits. I cited the most recent BLS employee benefits report that gave figures for personal leave benefits in March 2008 but not sick leave benefits specifically. I had assumed that the leave categories listed in the report were exhaustive and that sick leave was included in personal leave. I should have remembered the old saying about the work assume and done some more research.
I have not been able to find sick leave information for 2008; however, an earlier BLS report gives figures for workers in private industry in 2007. That report (Table 19, p. 28) indicates that 57 percent of workers in private industry have paid sick days as a benefit, a much higher incidence than paid personal days though still far from universal (about four out of every nine workers don't have the benefit).
Just over two-thirds of full-time workers get paid sick leave, while fewer than a quarter of part-time workers do. The incidence among managers and professionals is 80 percent, while the incidence among service workers is 39 percent.
Another update is that the Healthy Families Act has now been introduced as H.R. 2460.
