Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has added a national paid leave program back into the Build Back Better Act that President Biden’s $1.75 trillion framework took out last week. The newest version of the plan will provide a “comprehensive paid leave benefit” to all individuals if they “have any wages or self-employment income” and “have (or anticipate having) 4 or more hours of qualified caregiving.” Benefits range from 53–90 percent of recipients’ average weekly earnings over the past two years and last up to four weeks, and individuals need to wait about one week after applying for benefits to receive their payment.

According to the proposed legislation, the new paid leave benefit will cover everyone:

All types of workers are covered for benefits: full-time and part-time workers including gig workers and other self-employed workers, in both the private and public sector (including federal, state, and local government employees), and without regard to employer size. Workers are covered without regard to tenure on their current job, so long as they meet eligibility criteria under section 2202(a).

States that already offer public paid leave can continue to operate their program and the federal government will reimburse them. Employers who already provide paid leave will qualify for a federal grant that covers 90 percent of the cost for four weeks of leave. This means the federal government will assume responsibility for four weeks of paid leave for all workers, no matter the benefits they currently receive and without regard to their income. The CBO has not estimated the cost of this new program, but they estimated that a similar proposal offering 12 weeks of benefits would cost $50 billion per year.

Throughout the course of the pandemic, the National Opinion Research
Center at the University of Chicago has fielded a longitudinal survey of a
cohort of working-age adults for AEI. Our newest findings contradict a central
argument for the Democrat’s proposed government takeover of paid leave: that
most workers cannot access paid leave when they need it.

Our survey results found that many workers had access to paid leave from their employer throughout the pandemic, a finding consistent with Isabel Sawhill and colleagues at the Brookings Institution who analyzed existing data in 2019 and found that a majority of workers had access to paid leave. We also found paid leave access increased during the pandemic within our survey cohort. Among working adults who completed all three waves, 55 percent could access paid leave through their employer in September 2021, up from 44 percent before the pandemic.

Our survey results also show that leave taking increased
throughout the pandemic, with almost one-third of individuals taking leave and
36 percent reporting that someone in their household took leave in the six
months leading up to September 2021.

Our survey suggests that most workers were paid during their
time away, and this was consistent across types of leave.

However, our survey also shows that unmet need for paid
leave increased during the pandemic. In September 2021, 32 percent of workers said
they needed to take leave but did not in the prior six months. However, 46
percent of those adults still took some leave during the six-month period, which
suggests a challenge with length rather than access to leave.

The reasons people cited for not taking needed time off suggest
that a public paid leave program would not solve the unmet need problem. The
most commonly cited reason for not taking leave in February 2021 and September
2021 was “too much work.” The second most commonly cited reason was “could not
afford the loss of income”, which does suggest an access problem for some
workers, however.

These survey results suggest access challenges for some
working adults but raise concerns about a universal government program like the
Democrats are proposing. Most American workers have access to paid leave
through their employers, and unmet need for leave is just as likely to stem
from workload as affordability. The federal government can play a role in
helping more Americans take paid leave, but lawmakers should carefully consider
whether creating a universal program for a benefit more than half of workers
can already access through their employer is a wise use of taxpayer dollars.

Survey details: The American Enterprise Institute through NORC at the University of Chicago has conducted three waves of the Employment and Safety Net survey. The first wave was completed in July 2020, with follow-up surveys in February/March 2021 and September 2021. The sample completing the third wave totaled 2,701 respondents (from the original 3,508), including 1,489 parents from the baseline survey.

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