To date, 14 states and Washington, D.C., have passed paid family and medical leave laws.1 These laws provide covered workers with wage replacement benefits when they need time away from work to address their own serious health needs, care for a seriously ill or injured loved one, or bond with a new child.
Most of these state laws, though not all, include the opportunity for self-employed workers—including freelancers, independent contractors, and sole proprietors—to access paid family and sick leave coverage. Access to these benefits is critical for the self-employed, who experience the same health and family needs as all workers but almost always lack any form of paid leave unless they have access to an insurance system.
Prior Center for American Progress work in this series (see below) has explored in greater detail why these workers need paid leave and the essential benefits leave provides.2 This issue brief explains the status of coverage for self-employed workers under state paid leave programs.
For employees, coverage under state paid leave laws is generally automatic. Employees have a legal right to coverage, and they—and/or their employers—are legally required to contribute to the program. In contrast, no existing state paid leave program automatically covers self-employed workers.3 While counts of the number of self-employed workers vary substantially, there are at...
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