Labor Market Effects of US Sick Pay Mandates

Stefan Pichler () and Nicolas Ziebarth ()

No 9867, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper exploits temporal and spatial variation in the implementation of US sick pay mandates to assess their labor market consequences. We use the Synthetic Control Group Method (SCGM) and the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) to estimate the causal effect of mandated sick leave on employment and wages. Our findings do not provide much evidence that employment or wages were significantly affected by the mandates which typically allow employees to earn one hour of paid sick leave per work week, up to seven days per year. Joint tests for all treatment regions let us exclude, with 90% statistical probability, that wages decreased by more than 1% as a result of the mandates. With 92% probability, we can exclude that employment decreased by more than 1%.

Keywords: Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW); United States; wages; synthetic control group; employment; employer mandates; medical leave; sick leave; sick pay mandates (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 I13 I18 J22 J28 J32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 47 pages
Date: 2016-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea, nep-lma and nep-pke
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Published - revised version published in: Journal of Human Resources , 2020, 55 (2), 611-659

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp9867.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Labor Market Effects of U.S. Sick Pay Mandates (2020)
Working Paper: Labor Market Effects of U.S. Sick Pay Mandates (2018)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9867

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().