How Does California Paid Sick Leave Work For Employers?
California requires nearly every employer, whatever its size, to give each employee who works in the state for at least 30 days a year a minimum of 40 hours or five days of paid sick leave per year. Under Labor Code section 246 the time accrues at one hour for every 30 hours worked, or you can front-load the full amount at the start of each year, and employees can begin using it on their 90th day of employment. Unused accrued time carries over, though you can cap the bank at 80 hours or ten days and cap use at 40 hours or five days a year.
We know. It can be confusing. Let’s keep going.
The 40 hours is the easy part. Most of the trouble we see in Northern California businesses comes from everything else, and that’s where we come in for support. Among the possible troubles are balances on wage statements, the ever growing “protected reasons,” use of judicial proceedings for crime victims, attendance policy counting a protected sick day as an occurrence, and the combined PTO bank that turns into a payout at termination. Here are the answers you need to know to get the process right.
Contents
Who has to provide paid sick leave in California?
Almost every employer in California owes paid sick leave to any employee who works in the state for 30 or more days within a year of starting. There is no minimum headcount.
No matter what, this includes part-time, temporary, and seasonal employees—all exempt and hourly employees.
Exceptions are narrow. Employees covered by a collective bargaining agreement that already provides paid sick days and meets the statute’s other tests are partially exempt, as well as a few specific groups (such as certain airline flight crews and in-home supportive services providers) have their own rules.
If your workforce doesn’t fit one of those categories, assume the law applies to everyone on payroll, including the person who works two shifts a week.
How much sick leave do you have to provide, and how does it accrue?
You must provide at least 40 hours or five days per year. The law gives you three ways to get there.
The standard method accrues one hour of sick leave for every 30 hours worked, starting on the first day of employment.
An alternative accrual method is allowed if employees have at least 24 hours available by their 120th calendar day and at least 40 hours by their 200th.
The third option is the up-front method: put the full 40 hours in the bank at the start of each year and for new hires make 24 hours available by day 120 and 40 hours by day 200.
Easy peasy.
The methods differ in what carries over.
Under accrual, unused time rolls into the next year, though you can cap the total bank at 80 hours or ten days.
Under the up-front method, no carryover is required because the full amount arrives fresh each year.
Either way, you can limit use to 40 hours or five days per year.
“Days” means the employee’s regular workday, and the employee gets whichever comes out to more. For example, an employee who works ten-hour shifts is entitled to five of those days, which is 50 hours, and an employee who works six-hour shifts who takes five days has used 30 hours and still has ten left. Math time!
If your policy has been sitting at 24 hours or three days since before 2024, it’s out of date and needs to be rewritten.
When can employees use sick leave, and for what?
Our state says employees can start using accrued sick leave on their 90th day of employment.
They can use it for their own or a family member’s
- Preventive care.
- Diagnosis, care, or treatment of a health condition.
- “Safe time” connected to domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking, and other qualifying acts of violence.
The list continues to grow. Since October 1, 2025, under AB 406, employees can also use paid sick leave to serve on a jury or to appear in court under a subpoena as a witness. Since January 1, 2026, they can use it to attend judicial proceedings, including sentencing, plea, and release hearings, when they or a family member are the victim of certain serious crimes. Agricultural employees who work outdoors have been able to use it since January 1, 2025 to avoid smoke, heat, or flooding emergencies.
Also, family member is broad: child, parent, spouse or domestic partner, grandparent, grandchild, sibling, and one designated person the employee names. You can, however, limit employees to one designated person per 12-month period.
Two practical rules follow from this.
You can set a minimum increment for using sick leave, but it cannot be more than two hours.
And you generally cannot make a doctor’s note a condition of approving the time; the Labor Commissioner’s office treats denying sick leave solely for lack of certification as a violation.
If the need is foreseeable the employee has to give advance notice, and if it is not, notice as soon as practical is enough.
The practical rule we give our clients is that if an employee says it is sick leave, probably safest to treat it as sick leave.
Now that the list of protected reasons is broad enough, questioning the category creates more risk than approving the time.
Now, for the details.
What must show up on the pay stub and in the handbook?
Every wage statement, or a separate document delivered with the paycheck, must show the amount of paid sick leave the employee has available.
A common paperwork miss is the Sick Leave balance, and it is also the first thing a plaintiff’s attorney looks for, because it is easy to check against the hours.
Beyond the stub, you need the current Labor Commissioner paid sick leave poster, an updated Labor Code section 2810.5 notice for nonexempt hires that reflects the 40-hour minimum, and three years of records showing accrual and use. Sick leave is paid at the employee’s regular rate of pay for nonexempt employees (or a 90-day average if pay varies), and at the same rate as other paid leave for exempt employees. If you offer unlimited PTO, the stub can say “unlimited” and you have met the requirement, though you still need to make sure that unlimited policy does not subtly discourage protected use.
Do you have to pay out unused sick leave when someone leaves?
No, unless your own policy does it for you.
State law does not require you to cash out unused paid sick leave at separation as long as the sick leave is tracked in its own bank.
If you run a combined PTO bank that covers vacation and sick time together, California treats the whole balance as vacation, and vested vacation is earned wages that pay out in full at the final rate of pay.
There is a rehire rule, too. An employee who leaves and comes back within one year gets the unused sick leave balance reinstated, unless it was paid out at separation. For a business with seasonal staff that returns each year, that reinstatement is easy to miss and easy for an employee to notice. For what has to be in the final check and when, see Allevity’s guide, What Are an Employer’s Pay Obligations When Someone Quits or Gets Fired?
What if a city has its own sick leave ordinance?
You follow whichever rule is more generous to the employee, which is generally of a broad rule of thumb in our state.
Where the state and local rules differ, you comply with the more generous. Several California cities have their own paid sick leave ordinances, including San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, and Emeryville in the Bay Area and Los Angeles, Santa Monica, San Diego, and West Hollywood further south. Most Northern California employers between Stockton and the Oregon border are governed by state law alone, but the ordinance follows the place the work is done, so an employee you send to a client site in Oakland for a week can pick up Oakland’s rules for that week.
If you have employees who work in one of those cities, does your handbook have a specific section for them?
Where do employers get sick leave wrong?
Employers rarely get the hours wrong. They get the process wrong, which is what leads to the penalties.
The mistakes we see most often in Northern California businesses fall into a short list:
Wage statements that do not show the available balance or show it only for hourly employees.
Handbooks that still say 24 hours or three days, which was the minimum through 2023.
Requiring a doctor’s note for every absence, or denying the time until one arrives.
For accrual-based policies, failing to carry over hours from year to year or failing to allow employees to accrue up to a balance of 80 hours.
California is strict about paid sick leave because it protects the people who show up and do the work.
And knowing our state? Those rules are not going to get simpler.
Want to get your process right, ahead of any further changes? Keep reading.
How can Allevity help with sick leave compliance?
Allevity tracks sick leave accrual and use inside payroll, prints the available balance on every wage statement, and for our HR clients, keeps your handbook (as well as required notices) current when the law changes, which in California is roughly once a year.
We have run payroll for Northern California employers for more than 50 years.
We’ve seen all the changes and implement them year after year so they go into the clients’ setups from day one. If you are not certain your stubs show the right balance or your handbook still says three days let’s talk about your sick leave policy.
Book a callFrequently asked questions
Does California paid sick leave apply to part-time employees?
Yes. Any employee who works in California for at least 30 days within a year of starting is covered, including part-time, temporary, and seasonal employees, and accrual is based on hours worked.
Can I cap how much sick leave an employee accrues?
Yes, at 80 hours or ten days under the accrual method, and you can limit use to 40 hours or five days per year. If you front-load 40 hours each year, no carryover is required.
Can I require a doctor’s note?
Generally no. The Labor Commissioner’s office takes the position that an employer cannot deny paid sick leave solely because the employee did not provide certification from a health care provider.
Do I have to pay out sick leave at termination?
Not under state law if sick leave is tracked in its own bank, but if the employee is rehired within a year, they get the unused balance back. And don’t forget, a combined PTO bank pays out as vacation.
What changed on January 1, 2026?
AB 406 added attendance at judicial proceedings for employees, or their family members, who are victims of certain serious crimes to the list of protected uses. The same bill added jury duty and court appearances under subpoena as protected uses effective October 1, 2025.
Does sick leave have to be paid at overtime rates?
No. Nonexempt employees are paid at their regular, non-overtime rate of pay, or a 90-day average if their pay varies, and exempt employees are paid the same way they are paid for other forms of leave.