2024 paid leave benchmark report

The U.S. is the only OECD member country—and one of only six countries in the world—without a national paid parental leave policy. This puts the burden on employers and state governments to figure out an offering, which could explain why 84% of US employers are planning on changing their leave policies in the next two years. That’s why we offer our annual paid leave benchmark report to help you set competitive baselines (and even help you craft policy language with our generators). Increasingly, competitive paid leave policies are table stakes for employee recruitment and retention, making this data more timely than ever.

This year, we offer paid leave policy insights with data from more than 250 companies across more than 12 industries for parental, medical, and caregiver leaves. In this blog, we’ll cover the top highlights, but you can visualize the data on our dashboard, or by downloading the full dataset below.

Tenure benchmarks 

While FMLA-protected leaves have hard and fast tenure requirements (working full-time for a covered employer for 12+ months and logging at least 1,250 hours), our benchmarks show that only 5-10% of companies have tenure requirements for 12+ months, and a majority don’t have tenure requirements at all. If you and another company offer the same amount of paid leave time, but have different tenure requirements, that’s a factor employees consider. Here’s how tenure requirements shake out:

• 52% of companies offering paid parental leave don’t have tenure requirement
• 79% of companies offering paid medical leave don’t have tenure requirement
• 81% of companies offering paid caregiver leave don’t have tenure requirement

💡 Interestingly, the median employee tenure at companies with paid parental leave policies is 20% longer than those without, supporting the idea that paid leave does pay off.

Overall leave policy median benchmarks

Below we share median policy lengths across paid parental, medical, and caregiver leaves, with insights by company size and industry. 

💡 If you don’t yet have a paid parental, medical, and/or caregiver policy, or are looking to update yours, try our free policy generators. 

Parental leave

With only 27% of US private-sector workers overall having access to paid parental leave, and over four million Americans taking an FMLA-protected parental leave each year, the need for paid parental leave is dire. That makes these 2024 metrics reassuring:

• Median birthing parental leave policy: 16 weeks
• Median non-birthing parental leave policy: 12 weeks
• 97% of employers in our data set have a paid parental leave policy (up 2% from 2023).
• Since 2021, parental leave policy lengths for birthing and non-birthing parents have increased nearly 25% across our benchmark data.
• Company size and industry insights:
  • Leading industries for birthing parental leave policies: media, capital markets, engineering/manufacturing, and pharmaceuticals—offering a more generous 18-24 weeks.
  • For non-birthing parental leave policies, the media industry bumps down to an 8 week median, where specialty retail also sits.
  • Smaller companies, with 11-50 employees, also bump down to 14.25 weeks for birthing parental leave policies, while all others held at 16 weeks.

Medical leave

Though parental leave has more coverage, when it comes to those taking an FMLA-protected leave, 55% use it for taking care of their own medical condition. This year, we found that a smaller percentage of employers offered a paid medical leave, which we think is more reflective of adding more companies to the dataset that simply don’t have medical policies versus employers revoking them. 

• Median medical leave policy: 6 weeks
• Since 2022, median medical leave offering is up 76% (up to 6 weeks from 3.4 weeks).
• 46% of employers in our data set have a paid medical leave policy (down 12% from last year).
• Company size and industry insights:
  • Leading industries for longer medical leave policies include: pharmaceuticals, engineering/manufacturing, healthcare services, media, and consumer services, offering anywhere from 7-12 weeks.
  • Mid-sized companies and beyond (250+ employees) see a boost in their median medical leave to 8 weeks.

Caregiver leave

Across the US, the need for caregiver leave is on the rise—with 22% of US adults working full time and providing caregiving (up 21% since 2015). Though this is the least common paid leave policy, it’s also gained traction throughout the years in our benchmark reports.

• Median caregiver policy: 6 weeks 
• 24% of employers surveyed have a paid caregiver leave policy (up 15% from 2023).
• Company size and industry insights:
  • Leading industries for longer caregiver leave policies include: pharmaceuticals and capital markets, offering up to 12 weeks.
  • Companies 11-50 employees offer just a bit more caregiver leave at 8 weeks.
  • While the overall median is 6 weeks, the most generous policies range from 12-16 weeks.

💡Not sure where to start with caregiver leave? Learn why you need a policy, and try our free caregiver leave policy generator. 

The bottom line

Though we’re still working towards our long-term vision where every working person can afford to take the time they need during life’s pivotal moments, we’re reassured by the growth in the number of companies offering paid leaves as well as increases to the lengths of those leaves each year. By offering our benchmarking data, we hope to help companies set competitive, progressive, and equitable baselines for their leave policies. But even beyond that, we are here to raise the standard for how leaves are planned and managed so employers can best support a leave-taker to make the most of the time they need.