Mythbusting Paid Leave Statistics

By Vanessa Brown Calder of Cato.

"A favorite statistic cited by paid family leave activists is thoroughly misleading. Activists regularly argue that only 15 percent of workers have access to paid family leave, relying on a Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS) number. Just this week, the figure was cited in a Harvard Business Review article, a WSJ letter, and a Bloomberg Businessweek report on Leaning In, among other places.

But the BLS figure doesn’t agree with federal data sets or national survey results, including the Census Bureau’s Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), FMLA Worksite and Employee Surveys, Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey (CPS), or the National Survey of Working Mothers. Estimates of access to paid leave by source are detailed in the table below.

Table: Estimates of Access to Paid Parental Leave

Source	Paid Leave Figure	Details
FMLA Worksite and Employee Surveys	57% of women and 55% of men received pay for parental leave from any source	2012 Data
National Survey of Working Mothers	63% of employed mothers said their employer provided paid maternity leave benefits	2013 Survey
Census Bureau’s Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP)	50.8% of working mothers report using paid leave of some kind before or after child birth	2006 - 2008 Data
Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey (CPS)	Dating back to 1994, on average 45% of working women took parental leave received some pay	1994 - 2014 Data

The difference between the BLS figure and other federal and national figures is considerable. For example, the BLS figure is more than 40 percentage points lower than the FMLA figure, and there is a 50 percentage point spread between the BLS number and the National Survey of Working Mothers number.

That is partly because BLS uses a peculiar definition of paid family leave that excludes most types of paid leave that can be used for family reasons. The particulars are described in greater detail here. As a result, the BLS figure is an extreme outlier even compared to other federal data sources.
As an extreme outlier, the BLS figure is misleading in the extreme. To engage in an accurate conversation about the experience of working parents, activists and policy makers should abandon it."

Here is the earlier post she links to:

"AEI scholar Abby McCloskey’s recent column on paid family leave argues that just “12 percent of private-sector employees have access to paid family leave from their employer.” For McCloskey, this is one of many reasons that the federal government should create a paid family leave entitlement program.

The 12 percent figure surely sounds appallingly low. In fact, it is so low that it seems suspect: it doesn’t match well with real-life experience or casual observation. The figure also doesn’t match with data from nationally representative surveys. For example, 63 percent of employed mothers said their employer provided paid maternity leave benefits in one national study, a 50 percentage point difference from the most recent BLS figure.[1]

So what gives? It seems many U.S. women take paid parental leave, but the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) doesn’t count it. The BLS requires paid family leave be provided “in addition to any sick leave, vacation, personal leave, or short-term disability leave that is available to the employee.” This means that when employees take paid leave for family purposes, it doesn’t count if it could have been used for another purpose.

In the real world, parents with conventional benefit programs often save and pool paid personal leave, vacation, sick leave, and short-term disability in the event of a birth or adoption. On average, employees with five years of service are provided 22 days of sick and vacation leave. A majority of private-sector employees can carry over unused sick days from previous years, which adds to the tally. Meanwhile, the median short-term disability benefit is 26 weeks for private-sector workers; six to eight weeks can be used toward paid maternity leave.

These benefits do exactly the same thing as paid family leave. As Human Resources Inc. puts it, “family-leave is usually created from a variety of benefits that include sick leave, vacation, holiday time, personal days, short-term disability…” And although not all employers, especially small businesses, have official paid family leave policies, “Many employers are flexible and can work out an agreement with you.” Benefits that aren’t spelled out in the company manual are surely undercounted by BLS figures, too.

Paid leave doesn’t always fit neatly under the BLS’s survey categories for other reasons. Unconventional benefit packages, like consolidated paid leave (or PTO banks) allow employees to use paid leave for any reason, family or otherwise. Consolidated paid leave is on the rise; the BLS reports that 35 percent of private-sector employees receive it. In some industries, more than half of employees receive this flexible benefit.

Unlimited paid leave plans are also growing in certain industries. These plans allow employees to take as much leave as they want, whenever they want, assuming they meet performance expectations. But unlimited and consolidated paid leave don’t provide paid family leave separately, so neither count.

As a result, BLS figures seem to grossly underestimate paid family leave availability. BLS methods penalize employers that provide flexible benefits, by pretending their benefits don’t exist.

This helps to explain why BLS figures differ dramatically from other surveys. In spite of that, don’t expect government-sponsored paid leave advocates to update their figures any time soon.

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[1] Note that the Listening to Mothers III study focused on employed mothers; BLS focuses on private-sector employees."