California now requires employers to provide at least five days or 40 hours of paid sick leave per year, whichever is greater. Senate Bill 616 raised the previous three-day, 24-hour floor and took effect January 1, 2024, amending the Healthy Workplaces, Healthy Families Act.1California Legislative Information. California Senate Bill 616 – Sick Days: Paid Sick Days Accrual and Use The law has since been expanded with additional qualifying reasons for 2025 and 2026.
What “Five Days or 40 Hours” Actually Means
The “whichever is greater” wording matters most if your shifts run longer than eight hours. If you work four 10-hour shifts a week, five days of your schedule is 50 hours, and that is what you get, not 40. If you work standard eight-hour shifts, five days and 40 hours come out to the same thing.2California Legislative Information. California Labor Code LAB 246 Employers can offer more. They cannot offer less.
Who Is Covered
Nearly every worker in California qualifies after 30 days of employment with the same employer within a year. That includes part-time, per diem, temporary, and in-home supportive services workers. Staffing agency employees are covered too, with the agency or joint employer providing the leave.3California Department of Industrial Relations. California Paid Sick Leave: Frequently Asked Questions
A few groups are fully exempt:
- Railroad employees.
- Flight deck and cabin crew whose airlines already provide equivalent compensated time off.
- Retired annuitants working for government entities.
- Construction workers under collective bargaining agreements that meet specific requirements for wages, overtime, and paid leave.
Other unionized employees may be partially exempt if their contract includes paid sick days or equivalent paid time off, premium overtime rates, and a base hourly rate at least 30 percent above the state minimum wage. Even then, the anti-retaliation and procedural protections still apply.1California Legislative Information. California Senate Bill 616 – Sick Days: Paid Sick Days Accrual and Use
How You Earn the Leave
Standard Accrual
You earn at least one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours you work, starting on your first day. You can begin using it on your 90th day of employment.2California Legislative Information. California Labor Code LAB 246 Exempt salaried employees are treated as working 40 hours per week for accrual purposes, unless their normal schedule is shorter.
Alternative Accrual
Employers can use a different accrual formula, but it has to hit two benchmarks: at least 24 hours banked by your 120th calendar day of employment, and at least 40 hours by your 200th calendar day. Those same benchmarks apply each calendar year.
Frontloading
Many employers skip accrual math entirely by giving you the full five days or 40 hours at the start of each benefit year. When leave is frontloaded in full, no accrual tracking or carryover is required.
Annual Usage Cap
Even with a larger balance banked, your employer can cap how much you actually use in a year at 40 hours or five days, whichever is greater. This is up from the old 24-hour usage cap. Hours above the cap are not lost; they stay in your balance for future years.
Carryover From Year to Year
If you accrue leave rather than receive it upfront, unused hours roll over automatically. Your employer can cap your total accrued balance at 80 hours, or 10 days, up from the previous 48-hour limit. Once you hit that ceiling, you stop accruing until you use some leave. Combined with the 40-hour annual usage cap, the higher balance limit means you can keep a real reserve for a year when you need it.
What You Can Use It For
The qualifying reasons have grown over the past two years. As of 2026, you can use paid sick days for:
- Diagnosis, care, treatment, or preventive care for your own health, including routine checkups and flu shots.
- The same kinds of care for a spouse, registered domestic partner, child, parent, grandparent, grandchild, sibling, or one designated person of your choice per 12-month period.
- Purposes related to being a victim, or having a family member who is a victim, of domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking, or another qualifying act of violence.
- Jury service or compliance with a subpoena or court order as a witness (effective January 1, 2025).
- Attending judicial proceedings related to certain serious crimes you or a family member experienced, including hearings on plea deals, sentencing, and post-conviction release (effective January 1, 2026).
- Avoiding smoke, heat, or flooding from a declared local or state emergency, for outdoor agricultural workers.
Your employer cannot ask you why you are taking sick leave or make you document the specific reason. They also cannot require you to find a replacement to cover your shift as a condition of using your time.4California Legislative Information. California Labor Code LAB 246.5
How the Pay Is Calculated
Sick leave is paid at your regular rate, not a reduced rate. For hourly employees, the employer picks one of two methods: your regular non-overtime hourly rate for the workweek you used the leave, or your total compensation over the previous 90 days (excluding overtime premiums) divided by non-overtime hours worked in that period.3California Department of Industrial Relations. California Paid Sick Leave: Frequently Asked Questions For salaried exempt employees, sick leave is paid the same way other paid leave, like vacation, is calculated.
What Happens When You Leave the Job
Unlike vacation, unused sick leave does not have to be paid out when you quit, are fired, or retire. If you return to the same employer within 12 months, though, they have to reinstate your previously accrued and unused balance. The one exception is if your employer already cashed it out under a PTO policy when you left.
If Your Employer Already Offers PTO
Employers do not have to call the leave “sick leave.” A combined PTO policy that lumps vacation and sick time together satisfies the law as long as it provides at least 40 hours or five days per year usable for all the qualifying reasons above, and meets the same accrual, carryover, and anti-retaliation rules. If your existing PTO already exceeds the state minimums, SB 616 does not add anything on top.
If You Are Punished for Using It
Your employer cannot fire, threaten, demote, cut the hours of, or otherwise punish you for using sick leave, trying to use it, filing a complaint, or cooperating with an investigation. If an adverse action happens within 30 days of any of those protected activities, the law creates a rebuttable presumption of retaliation. In practice, that means if you are fired two weeks after filing a sick leave complaint, your employer has to prove the firing was unrelated.
The Labor Commissioner can order reinstatement, back pay, and payment of any sick days unlawfully withheld. Penalties come on top:
- For withheld sick pay: three times the dollar amount of the withheld days, or $250, whichever is greater, up to $4,000 total.5California Legislative Information. California Labor Code LAB 248.5
- For other harm like firing or demotion: $50 for each day the violation continued, up to $4,000 total.
The Labor Commissioner or Attorney General can also bring a civil suit for the same penalties plus attorney’s fees.
When Local Rules Give You More
SB 616 sets a statewide floor, not a ceiling. Several California cities, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Oakland, have their own paid sick leave ordinances that can require more than five days per year depending on employer size and other local specifics. Whichever standard is more generous is the one that applies to you. If you are unsure which rule governs, check with your city’s labor office.
Federal Law Does Not Fill This Gap
No federal law requires private employers to provide paid sick leave. Executive Order 13706 requires up to seven days a year, but only for employees working on covered federal contracts.6U.S. Department of Labor. Executive Order 13706, Establishing Paid Sick Leave for Federal Contractors The Family and Medical Leave Act provides up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave for serious health conditions, but only for employees who meet its hours and employer-size thresholds.7U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 28: The Family and Medical Leave Act California’s paid sick leave covers the shorter absences those federal programs do not: routine illness and preventive care, available to nearly all employees regardless of employer size or hours worked.